Fireflight
by The Melon Lord Approves
Summary: Avatar: Unabridged. It's not so terribly different from the ATLA we all know and love. The characters are the same ones we remember, the concept and general plot are the same... but also not. The world is darker, everything is explored more thoroughly, a few things that made no f'ing sense are tidied up. An in-depth, mature take on the whole saga. Come in, stay awhile...
1. Prologue: Katara

**Title-** Fireflight  
**Author-** Melon  
**Rating-** a helluva lot higher than TV-Y7, that's for sure. Expect a solid T. If anything higher turns up, I will provide fair warning.  
**Genre(s)-** Adventure/Romance/Action/Friendship/Spiritual  
**Characters/Pairings- **everybody's here, it's Kataang, and I'm willing to consider requests on other pairings.  
**Summary-** Avatar... unabridged. It's not so terribly different from the ATLA we all know and love, really. The characters are the same ones we fell in love (or hate) with, the concept and the general arcs of the plot are the same... but also not. The world is a little darker, everything is explored a little more thoroughly, some of the episodes that made no f***ing sense are cleaned up a little... you feel me? A more complex, more mature take on Aang's saga.

**A/N-** I finally watched the first season of Legend of Korra... and I was quite impressed. It's truly a worthy follow-up and a great show in its own right. But the thing I loved most about it was the darker tone it took and the richer, more mature themes that were explored. Clearly this is a show geared toward people like myself, who were pre-teens when ATLA was first airing and who are now in our late teens/early 20s and want more Avatar, dammit. And it got me to thinking... how might the show have looked if it had longer episodes (the better to explore plot and character nuances) and been geared toward an older audience? It's already a more complex and engaging series than most of the shows that air on primetime, so why not revisit the entire saga with that in mind?

Basically this is my way of filling in plot holes (comets are made of ice, yo), fully exploring events and concepts that didn't get enough screen time, and just generally fleshing everything out a little more.

Ages have been adjusted slightly to better manage the darker tones of this story.

* * *

~*Book 1: Wind & Water*~

Prologue: Katara

* * *

Peace is a foreign concept. Even I can admit that. One might think that here, in the fey twilight at the bottom of the world, things would be different. But we are living in a martial state even at the South Pole. The world is out of balance and a place that should have been a safe haven from all the busyness and sweaty commerce of the warmer parts of the world has been thrown into the same chaos as the rest of them. I don't know what started this war. I don't know what made the Firelord of old turn his back on the other kingdoms and set out to destroy us instead. I don't think I want to know. And sometimes I think that if only I did, I could find a way to stop it.

I doubt there is anyone alive who remembers a time before the great war with the Fire Nation, who can look back into the distant past and see fond memories of a time when they were happy and peaceful and unafraid. If there is, that person must be the luckiest man alive. At least they have a store of days untainted by horror. For most everyone, all we've ever known since childhood is the fear and instability of wartimes. I like to think it's better here, in the Southern Water Tribe. We do not face daily or even weekly raids by the Fire Nation. The threat is still there, but our society has already been ravaged to the point that the Fire Nation has no further use for us. And so I have to believe that now, at least, we have it a little easier. But times like these do not create optimists or lend themselves to a renewal of hope.

Maybe that is what makes me such a strange bird. My brother is pragmatic, almost utilitarian, in his outlook and his undertakings. The whole tribe is, really. Admittedly, that is in our nature. It has to be, given that we make our home in a place where the sun hardly shines for half the year. I never could be like that, though. Gran-Gran sometimes says I was born with stars in my eyes and it's an apt description. Maybe it's because I was gifted with water-bending, the last and only member of our tribe to be so blessed, or maybe it's because I believe just a little too hard in the stories the elders tell.

Either way, I am the rare optimist. Even on the days when the black snow falls and new devastation rains down on us at the hands of the Fire Nation, I am incapable of relinquishing that little spark of hope that I carry with me.

I truly believe that I will live to see the end of this war. I have to. I'm not sure if it's for the world's sake or for my own selfish reasons. Probably the latter, if I am honest. I'm suffocating here, trapped under a hundred thousand warnings to keep my talents hidden, and barely able to use them as it is. If the Fire Nation discovered what I can do, they would surely come and take me away, just as they took all the other water-benders. That is why I am such a poor excuse for a bender; there is no one to teach me and never a safe time to practice.

In another life, in another time, when there was no war, I know I could have been a great bender. I'm sure I would have had the power to stop the Fire Navy fleet in its tracks. I'm _**sure **_of it_. _And isn't that the irony of it? Because of the war, I cannot learn bending. Because I cannot learn bending, I cannot do anything to help put an end to the war. It's a vicious cycle, and I do not know how to break out of it. So instead, I hope_._

I hope that the Southern tribe's little fleet will help turn the tide in our favor. I hope that the Firelord will have a sudden change of heart and somehow see what it is that he is doing to us all. But most of all... I put my hope in the Avatar.

This is the point at which people begin to find me foolish. The Avatar... the living channel between the mortal and spirit realms, the only being able to master all four elements, the impartial peacekeeper meant to maintain balance in the world... They say he is gone. He vanished before the war had even started. The last known incarnation of the Avatar was an air-bender, they remind me. Even if he survived whatever Fire Nation horrors brought about the disappearance of his people, he is surely dead by now, they say. And even if he isn't, what chance could a man over a hundred years old, physically frail no matter what his bending prowess, have against the might of the Firelord?

But I still believe in him. Wherever he is, the Avatar cannot have abandoned us. Perhaps he is playing a long game, honing his bending skill to unimaginable levels before confronting the Firelord. Perhaps they are right, and he is dead. But if that is the case, he has been reborn. Far to the north, in our sister tribe, there might even now be a new Avatar preparing to make his presence known and save us all. I believe this, because I have to.

I believe, and I wait, and I pray for a change in the winds.

* * *

**A/N-** I intend to get a little further in my writing process before posting further, but I thought I'd just get the prologue out there and see if anyone's interested.


	2. Chapter 1: When Fate Comes Knocking

**A/N-** Eh, I told myself I was going to give myself more of a time cushion, waiting to post until I'd written at least five more chapters, but what can I say? I'm as impatient as Zuko. Although a lot of that probably has to do with you- you guys... you wonderful, wonderful people who reviewed! Thank you so tremendously much! I love getting feedback, and this fandom is so much more awesome about that than others I've been a part of over the years.

I'd like to take a moment to reply to some of you who left anonymous reviews whom I can't respond to via PM.

**Melly-** Thank you! That's really sweet of you to say. I hope you continue to enjoy it.

**Phooka-** Never fear! I, personally, may swear like an underpaid Fire Nation sailor on shore leave, but I am not my characters. I'm very considerate about the dialogue I put into characters mouths. I make no promises when it comes to Jun (let's be real here), but I see no reason for the Gaang to be running around with the kind of potty-mouths some people give them. That said, thanks for your deeply amusing review, and I hope to see more of you over the course of this story.

* * *

~*Book 1: Wind & Water*~

Chapter 1: When Fate Comes Knocking

"_I'm fifteen for a moment_  
_Caught in between ten and twenty_  
_And I'm just dreaming.._."  
-Five For Fighting

* * *

Destiny often finds us at the most unlikely of times. In the fairytales we tell ourselves, we are always prepared to look Fate in the eye and welcome her with grace when she sees fit to knock on our door. The truth, however, is that destiny is rarely on time and Fate is an elusive guest. Reality is messier than we might like, and we are too caught up in the daily business of getting on with our lives to notice when those defining moments come around until after they've passed and we're caught up in the current of Inevitability. For two young members of the Southern Water Tribe, destiny began with an arbitrary decision facilitated by necessity.

At the south pole, land-based foodstuffs were difficult to acquire. Being in the depths of winter as it was, the great herds of moose-caribou had all migrated far away from the string of little villages along the coast that made up the Tribe. The preferred option for food in the winter, therefore, became fish. Already the principle food-group for the Water Tribe, the people came to rely almost exclusively on the fruits of the sea during the colder months of the year.

Navigating the sea-ice, however, was a tricky enough proposition in high summer. Doing so in the Tribe's little canoes during the winter was nearly impossible and only the extremely capable and courageous tried it without the aid of a water-bender. Most of the Tribe's water-benders had been captured in Fire Nation raids years before, leaving only one young woman at the south pole who still had the skill. It was this girl, a beauty named Katara, who had set out with her brother to fish on that fateful winter afternoon.

Katara and Sokka were the children of Hakoda, the brave and currently absent chief of the tribe. The siblings were very similar in appearance, both tall and slender and both possessing the dark hair and skin typical of their people. But where Sokka had soft grey-blue eyes, his younger sister had inherited their father's striking ocean-blue eyes that stood out in vivid contrast to her dark complexion. They were not long out of childhood, but it wasn't hard to see that their spirits had reached maturity much more quickly than their bodies. That had become the way of the world in the years since the start of the Great War.

At the moment, Sokka was deeply engrossed in his work. He clutched a hooked fishing spear in his right hand, and was taking advantage of the cloudy day to lean out over the water without casting a shadow. Spying a fish the size of his hand just a few scant yards beneath their boat, he grinned, hefting his spear in excitement and readying himself to strike.

Before he could, however, he was soaked by a deluge of water that splashed up over the side as the boat shifted dramatically to port.

"Gah!"

Sokka sputtered in shock and annoyance, and by the time he had wiped the salt water out of his eyes and looked frantically back over the side of the canoe, the fish he'd had his eyes on had long since vanished. He whipped around to face his sister, who sat behind him with a sheepish expression on her face.

"What did you do?" he demanded angrily.

"Tried to catch a fish," she replied with a shrug.

His eyebrows rose questioningly.

"I'm just trying to be helpful."

"By dumping water on me? Spirits, Katara!" he exclaimed. "Why do you have to screw everything up with your freaky water thing? The only reason I even brought you along is cause I'm not dumb enough to make the same mistake old Komi One-Leg did and try run the ice floes without a water-bender!"

Katara's striking eyes flashed and she raised her chin in a show of stubbornness. "Yeah, well, news flash O Great Warrior! We need fish!"

"And that's what I was doing! _Fishing!_"

"Some fishing! Unless you want the whole village to starve, we're going to have to do better than sitting out here for hours while you spear barely enough fish to feed yourself," Katara said in an incensed tone.

Sokka growled in frustration. "Well maybe if some people didn't get me soaking wet _every ten seconds_, we'd be doing better!"

"That's not my fault," Katara insisted. "You were moving around! You threw off my balance."

"Oh, so it's my fault you were playing with magic water instead of doing your job?"

With this, however, he had gone one step too far. Katara leapt to her feet, cheeks already tinged pink from the freezing temperature now flushing red with anger. "Just shut up!" she shouted. "I am trying really, really hard here, Sokka!"

Unnoticed by her, the gentle waves that had been rocking their canoe began to increase in size and power, forcing Sokka to grab the sides of the little vessel to keep his seat.

"I'm so _sorry_ that I'm not the perfect, quiet woman who sits at the back of the boat and quietly does her job and nothing else and never ever makes a little mistake with her water-bending," Katara spat, wringing sarcasm from every syllable.

"Katara, stop-!" her brother implored, trying to point out the huge waves that had caught their boat in the trough, threatening to submerge them.

"No!" Katara overrode him. "I'm not made that way, okay? I can't just sit back like a good little girl to satisfy your masculine vanity while our village is starving!"

She screamed the last few words, and as she did the waves she had unwittingly created crested, rolling away from them in every direction and stirring up the sea bed far below. The rebounding water tossed the canoe wildly about, and the siblings were thrown to the bottom of the vessel, holding on tight as the ocean made her unhappiness known. A low rumbling could be heard, and the boat began to steady.

"It's official," Sokka said without lifting his head from the bottom of the boat. "You've gone right past weird and on to freakish."

"I did that?" she asked in amazement.

He nodded, and moved to return to his seat, but suddenly he froze in place.

Katara sat up, her hands shaking from shock and residual anger. "Sokka-" she began, an apology already forming on her lips.

Before she could say another word, however, the expression on her brother's face as he looked past her kept her silent. She turned to follow where he was looking, and her own eyes widened. "What is that?" she whispered.

"That" was the most unusual iceberg either of them had ever seen. Perfectly round, with swirls and little air pockets running through it like a glass marble, it had apparently been trapped beneath the water only to be stirred up by Katara's impromptu tempest. But what really stood out were the two figures frozen within the ice, barely visible. Katara's sharp eyes could make out a human body and some kind of animal, the size of an elephant-whale and sporting a pair of ferocious horns. Katara felt the same sinking surprise in her gut that she had felt when she was twelve and had unexpectedly found the frozen carcass of a tundra wolf: a nauseating mixture of disgust, fascination, and sadness.

A few quick hand motions brought the nearby blocks of ice into alignment, creating a path across the open water between their canoe and the iceberg. With only slight hesitation, Katara leapt onto the nearest step.

"What are you doing?" Sokka hissed.

"I want to get a closer look," she said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Her brother rolled his eyes, and then joined her in the unsteady walk across the free-flowing ice blocks.

Katara reached the flat crust of ice that surrounded the orb, and stood staring up into the barely-discernable face of the person within it. She thought the figure might be male, but she wasn't able to see anything else.

"How do you think they died?" Sokka asked.

She shrugged. "It must have been a long time ago," she mused. "What kind of animal is that? I've never seen anything like it."

"Probably some Earth Kingdom animal we don't have down here," Sokka suggested practically.

Katara nodded, her expression downcast. "It's so sad," she said. She reached out and laid one gloved hand on the slick surface of the orb.

Abruptly, the human figure's eyes snapped open, an unearthly glow emanating from them. Katara leapt back in shock and Sokka caught her arm to keep her from tumbling into the freezing ocean behind them.

"He's alive!" she exclaimed. "We have to help him!"

Before Sokka could react, she had seized her brother's club from him and was taking a running swing at the ice. He reached for her, but was unable to prevent her from slamming the head of the club into the orb's surface.

"No, Katara! Don't! We don't know what that-"

He never got to finish his sentence. Katara's desperate windmilling swings, though largely ineffective, managed to put a small crack in the orb. Abruptly, a jet of steam burst through the crack. Sokka grabbed his flailing sister and pulled her away, preventing them both from being scalded. The sudden outrush of heat culminated when the top blew off the orb and a brilliant beam of blue-white light that felt hotter than the sun in the Fire Nation pierced the very sky.

* * *

Out on the sea, just at the border between the Earth Kingdom boundary waters and the cold seas that surrounded the pole, a lone ship was sailing southward. At the prow stood a man of nineteen or twenty. Most of his scalp was shaved, save for the crown of his head, where his hair was tied into a long topknot. He wore the uniform of a Fire Nation officer, and his youthful face would have been handsome were it not for the brutal scar that marred the left side, leaving only his lower jaw intact on that side. His eyes were the bright liquid-gold color that was unique to the noble classes of the Fire Nation, and his expression was unyielding.

He was Zuko, a princeling in exile. Cast-off son of the Firelord, he had known no home but the very ship on which he stood, and no companionship save for her small crew and his rotund uncle, in well over three years.

It was an unjust punishment for so slight a crime as he had committed, but that was the way of Firelord Ozai. Why should his firstborn be exempt?

As was his habit, Zuko had been watching the sea intently for several hours, unnervingly still and silent. None of the crew was quite sure what he was looking for. It was not in the nature of Ozai's soldiers to question a prince of the Fire Nation, even a banished one.

Zuko's gaze did not turn away from the horizon. Although most of the left side of his face was twisted and horrible to look at, his left eye was still bright and clear, the only thing spared by the burn that had disfigured him. It was this keen eye which caught the first sight of a thin column of light that shot into the sky far off the ship's port side.

The light was so bright it was hard to look at even from so far away.

One corner of Zuko's mouth twitched in a tiny and pathetic parody of a smirk.

With a wave of his hand, he signaled to a nearby sailor.

"Your orders, Prince Zuko?" the man asked.

The proud youth nodded. "Tell the helmsman... we have our heading."

* * *

The Water Tribe siblings lay flat on their backs, staring in awe and trepidation at the glow that surrounded them. The dramatic flare that had burst forth from within the ice dimmed, and as it faded Katara could see that it had cracked the dome wide open, leaving a faintly shimmering rim of ice, like half of a broken egg.

"Now look what you did!" Sokka groaned, sitting up and pressing on his temples. He looked around and let out another groan, this time more from disappointment than from pain. "And now the canoe is gone! If we die, I am never talking to you again!"

Katara paid him absolutely no mind. She rolled from her back onto her knees, crouching in the ice and staring up at the jagged edges of the shattered orb.

The person she had freed rose into view, climbing out of the ice on steady feet, with eyes glowing and a face terribly empty. Before Katara even had a chance to decide whether she should be afraid or not, the light faded from his eyes. He let out a faint sigh and his legs gave out. He tumbled down the slope and landed in a crashing heap a few yards from where she sat.

Katara scrambled forward on her hands and knees to the place where he fell, quickly turning him over onto his back.

"He's so warm," she remarked softly, marveling at the unexpected heat of his skin, as her brother came to stand protectively beside her.

The mysterious figure, Katara was surprised to realize, was younger than she was. He appeared to be about fourteen, thin and still at that age where he hadn't quite grown into his limbs, rather like a gangly polar-bear-dog pup whose paws are too big for him. His skin was much paler than any tribesman she had ever seen and his features, gone slack in unconsciousness, were delicate and ordinary. His clothes were strange, clearly intended for a warmer climate and cut from simple cloth in shades of yellow and orange.

Stranger than his attire, though, were the markings. His head was shaved completely bald and an arrow was tattooed in blue ink across his forehead and scalp, continuing right down the back of his neck and disappearing down his collar. As Katara looked the boy over, she saw similar markings on his bare feet and the backs of his hands. She raised a graceful hand to touch the mark on his brow, but thought better of it at the last moment and drew her fingers back.

"Who _is_ he?" she whispered.

Sokka just stared mutely at the unconscious boy in the snow, a nervous look on his face.

He began showing signs of life, a flicker of an eyelid and a low hum in the back of his throat, clearly dragging his feet on the path back to consciousness. When at last he opened his large moon-grey eyes, his gaze fixed on Katara, who was closest to him.

"Blue eyes," he mumbled.

"What?" Katara asked, thrown. She had been waiting on a _who are you?_ or a _where am I?_

"You have blue eyes," he clarified. "You're from the Water Tribe?"

"Yes," she confirmed.

The stranger sat up, forcing Katara to move back a bit to maintain a reasonable distance between them.

At that moment, Sokka chose to make his presence known. "Stay back!" he warned, putting a hand on his sister's shoulder to gently but firmly hold her back.

She felt a surge of annoyance. "Oh buzz off, Sokka!" she said, swatting away his arm and getting to her feet. She leaned forward and offered a hand to the stranger. He gratefully took her hand and allowed her to pull him to his feet. Katara noted off-handedly that he was exactly her height.

"What's going on here?" he asked, rubbing his forehead in bafflement.

"Shouldn't we be asking you that?" Sokka demanded, beginning to sound a little hysterical. "Who are you? How did you get in the ice? Why aren't you frozen?"

The boy shrugged. "I'm not sure." He looked prepared to say more, but a change came across his expression and he abruptly turned back to the remnants of the ice bubble he'd been encased in. With striking lightness of foot, he leapt in two graceful strides up the wall of ice and disappeared down the slope on the other side.

Katara met Sokka's eyes and they exchanged the kind of silent communication unique to siblings. One simultaneous shrug later, and they followed him up and over the rim of the little glacial bowl.

As Katara slid to a graceful stop, her brother right behind her, she was pretty sure she could actually feel her eyes bugging out of her head. Their new acquaintance was sprawled over the head of the enormous creature who had shared his confinement in the ice, affectionately running his hands through its shaggy fur. Katara tried her best to come up with an apt description of the sluggish, disoriented beast she was seeing, but she couldn't find the words. She was absolutely dumbstruck.

Sokka, however, had no such problem. "What is _that?_" he asked.

The strange boy looked up at them from his perch atop the animal's head, a delighted smile still on his face. "This is Appa," he said. "He's my flying bison."

Sokka rolled his eyes. "Riiiiight," he drawled skeptically. "And this is Katara, my flying sister."

"I'm serious," the younger boy replied. He patted one of the sky bison's curved horns, and the large creature gave a grunt of acknowledgement, tossing his head gently. His rider only laughed.

Katara realized she was eager to learn the identity of this very strange stranger. There was something about him that intrigued her... aside from the dramatic lightshow and strange tattoos, that is. She couldn't put her finger on what it was, but there was just a quality about him that aroused her natural curiosity. "So, you never told us your name," she prompted.

Distracted from the attentions he had been paying to his hairy friend, he looked down at her. "I'm Aang," he said.

"I'm Katara, and Sir Skeptic over here-" She jerked a finger over her shoulder. "-is my brother, Sokka."

Aang slid from his perch atop Appa's head and _floated_ downward to land gracefully in front of the siblings. "Nice to meet you," he said, as though nothing strange whatsoever had occurred.

Katara's eyes widened, but she reigned in the urge to bombard Aang with questions. The need to know, to _understand_, was nearly overwhelming. But she could tell from the utterly bemused expression on their new acquaintance's face as he looked around, studying their surroundings, that he was at least as surprised as they were. Therefore, she restrained herself to asking, "Do you really not know how you ended up in the ice?"

Aang shook his head. "No idea," he answered. The slight hesitation and the uncomfortable look on his face made Katara wonder if he were really being honest about that.

Sokka was rubbing his forehead again. "Light-up icebergs and tattooed boys and supposedly flying magic animals... this is just too much. I don't know about you, Katara, but I'd like to get back to reality now."

The words had a sobering effect on Katara. Discovering Aang had been delightful (if strange) distraction. For just a few distracted minutes, she'd forgotten the responsibilities that weighed on her- on them. But the harsh realities of their situation were closing in on her once again. Her unintentional display of water-bending and the subsequent explosive splintering of the iceberg had in all likelihood sunk their canoe, and along with it the entire catch of their fishing expedition. They were stranded on an iceberg a good hundred yards from the nearest shore, and even if they were to make it back to solid ground, they were a good fifteen hours out from their village. It was extremely fortunate, Katara reflected, that they had another option.

The Southern Water Tribe, unlike its metropolitan northern counterpart, was comprised of a collection of small, self-reliant villages strung out along the coastline. Political structure within the tribe was loose and communal, but an unofficial leader was generally agreed upon even in peacetime, and since war with the Fire Nation had broken out a century before, a long line of strong leaders had sprung up in Sokka and Katara's home village. It was from this bloodline, in fact, that the siblings themselves were descended. Their father, Hakoda, was the chief of the Tribe.

This status, though not accompanied by nearly as much pomp as a similar title might have in one of the other kingdoms, granted Hakoda's children a sort of distinction among their peers. It also granted them unrestricted freedom to travel between the other villages. Although the Water Tribe were generally a welcoming and neighborly people by nature, wartimes made paranoia into a lifestyle. Katara and Sokka were among the select group of people (which included the elders of the Tribe) who were welcomed into any village freely and without question at any time. The other villagers had too much respect for Hakoda to turn away his motherless children.

"There's no way we're going to make it home before the temperature drops tonight," Sokka said, apparently having come to the same conclusion his sister had reached only moments before.

"We'll have to try to walk to Kiviuq's village," she reasoned.

Sokka grudgingly nodded. "Considering you managed to soak me through, earlier, that's probably smart. I'm in no mood to die of frostbite. If we get moving now, we might be able to make it there by sunset. Let's get out of here."

He jerked his head at her, indicating clearly that she ought to get a move on and try to bend enough of the ice floe to make them a path, but Katara had other thoughts.

She turned to Aang. "What about you?" she asked. "Do you have anywhere to go?"

"This is the Southern Water Tribe, right?"

Katara nodded.

"Then... not really," he confessed, shuffling his feet. "I know people in the Northern Water Tribe, but no one from the South."

Katara shot a look at her brother that spoke volumes. Sokka rolled his eyes as if to say, _Oh, get on with it._

"Would you like to come with us, then?" she offered kindly.

Aang's formerly resigned expression let up in a brilliant grin. His features, which were caught somewhere between the man he would grow into and the round-faced look of childhood, suddenly looked much younger. The guileless smile he gave Katara was honest and joyful, and the kind of expression that no one old enough to speak the name "Firelord Ozai" wore anymore. Katara found it incredibly strange to see it on a teenager's face.

"I'd like that," he said. "And I might be able to help with your problem. Flying on Appa is a lot faster than walking! We can make it back to your village before dark for sure."

Sokka snorted his disbelief once more, still giving half his attention to the floating chunks of ice in the bay, undoubtedly trying to plan out a route to shore in case his sister's bending failed her. "If you think we're really getting on that big hairy beast with a total stranger, you've got another-"

His protest died in his throat as he looked around to see Aang already helping his sister get settled in one corner of the broad saddle on Appa's back.

"Katara, you're not serious," Sokka groaned.

She smirked at him. "If you've got a better plan, feel free to share."

"I do have a better plan!" Sokka said. "It's called 'head for Kiviuq's village and don't blindly trust the guy you just met.'"

"We can always keep that as a backup plan," Katara pointed out. "Come on, Sokka. Take a chance, won't you?"

Sokka hesitated a second longer, then shook his head, staring at his boots with a resigned sigh. "Fine," he muttered. He went over to Appa and grudgingly accepted Aang's hand up to the saddle, noting that the skinny newcomer was stronger than he looked. He would have to remember that. If he turned out to somehow be a Fire Nation spy, Sokka had no intentions of underestimating him just because he looked about as harmless as a puppy.

As he settled into the saddle opposite his sister, Sokka wondered what had gotten into her. Katara was always an overly optimistic type, to the point of naïveté, but this really took the cake.

Which was why he couldn't help smirking her way when Aang's encouraging cry of "Yip-yip!" resulted in Appa's profound failure to fly.

"Wow," he drawled as the bison belly-flopped into the sea. "That was truly amazing."

Katara's only reply was to stick her tongue out at him.

* * *

General Iroh, eldest son of the late Firelord Azulon, had been stripped of command, but he had lost neither his title nor the fire-bending skill that had made him a living legend in his younger days. To all outward appearances, he was an overweight older gentleman interested only in pursuing the pleasures life had to offer him, but when tested he was still a formidable opponent.

The same could not be said for his pupil, young Prince Zuko. His nephew had never been a prodigy by anyone's measure, and Iroh despaired of teaching him what he truly needed to learn: patience. Zuko, he reflected, had all the passion a fire-bender could ever want, but he lacked the restraint and composure necessary to master the art of bending.

What he was not lacking, however, was determination. This became apparent when Iroh attempted to talk his nephew into abandoning his post at the prow of the lone warship.

"I'm going to bed," he said pointedly. "A man needs his rest."

The young royal did not so much as glance at his aging uncle, who sighed. It was nearly nightfall but ever since that afternoon when a strange beam of light had shot into the air, visible for hundreds of miles around, Zuko had hardly moved from the position he was in now, as far forward as he could get, leaning forward into the frigid Arctic winds. Iroh knew why. For three years, Zuko had been searching tirelessly for one man. That determination was admirable, but at this particular moment, Iroh could find it nothing but frustrating.

"Prince Zuko, you need some sleep," he said more directly. "Even if you're right and the Avatar is alive, you won't find him. Your father, grandfather, and great-grandfather all tried and failed."

Zuko did not face him, but he fixed on his uncle in his peripheral vision for a long moment. "Because their honor didn't hinge on the Avatar's capture," he said disdainfully. His eyes turned once more to the horizon. "Mine does," he whispered. "This coward's century of hiding is over."

* * *

As it transpired, Katara's trust in their new friend had not been unfounded. Aang's (purportedly) flying bison might be a little lacking in the gravity-defying department, but he was certainly a reliable mount. Even with Appa limiting himself to swimming through the seas, his powerful tail propelled them at amazing speeds over the water. A journey that would have taken a full summer day or more by canoe was managed on Appa's back by the time night closed over the South Pole.

Most of the village was asleep for the night, safely curled up together within their igloos and seal-skin tents. The three young people crept quietly into the little community, conscious of the slumber of their neighbors. Sokka, completely fed up with the absurdity of the entire day, elected to wash his hands of the business and left his sister to deal with their strange new acquaintance.

Katara quietly pointed out the highlights of the village which could be easily seen from their entry point. There really wasn't much to it, truth be told. It had been larger once, but with most of the tribe's men away to war, there wasn't much sense sprawling out when a smaller (and more easily defensible) space would do just as well.

"I can't offer you a place in our igloo, I'm afraid," she said apologetically. "There's barely room for me and Sokka and Gran-Gran. But there are plenty of empty tents you can sleep in tonight."

"Thanks, Katara," Aang said. After a pause, he added, "You're really nice."

Katara smiled. "Thanks," she said.

"I don't think your brother likes me very much."

"That's just Sokka. He's a little paranoid, but he means well. Don't tell him I said that, though."

Aang gave her a lopsided half-grin at that. "My lips are sealed," he said, drawing his fingers across his mouth and turning an imaginary key at the corner.

Hiding her amusement, Katara said, "Anyway, I thought maybe we'd put you in Bato's tent. That's right next to us, so you'll be close by."

Through his "locked" lips, Aang let out a muffled series of sounds that might possibly have been "That sounds good."

At this, Katara couldn't help but laugh out loud, clapping one mitten-clad hand over her mouth to muffle the sound. "Come on, you," she said on a giggle. "We can get Appa battened down for the night."

Twenty minutes later, after a thorough struggle to get the huge bison's saddle off his back and the much easier task of getting Aang the supplies he would need to keep him comfortable for the night in Bato's long-abandoned residence, Katara felt she'd done her job as hostess and bid her goodnight to her new friend.

She paused for just a moment at the entrance to her own home. She looked, as was her custom, to the moon. It was a nightly ritual, this staring contest she held with the glowing silver orb in the sky, her tiny way of paying homage to the original source of water-bending. The moon was just a tiny sliver that night, but in just a few short weeks it would reach full on the eve of her sixteenth birthday. Katara shivered, from a combination of the cold and the anxiousness she felt for that fast-approaching date.

As she looked away from the moon, her eyes fell briefly on the tent she had just left. A tiny hint of Sokka's doubt crept into her mind. If she was honest with herself, she didn't really know much about Aang other than his name. Logic was screaming at her to be careful, because not everyone was who they appeared to be, especially in times like these. Something else in her, however, the same something in her gut that kept her believing in a long-missing air-bender, was telling her to trust the boy she had found in the iceberg.

Katara had no idea, as she turned away and entered the igloo she shared with her small family, that her life was about to change radically. Fate had come knocking, and as is usually the case, the novice water-bender had no idea that she had already answered the door.

* * *

**A/N-** Confession time: although I love Sokka to little itty bitty bits now, I didn't always. In fact, for about the first four or five episodes, I hated his guts and kind of wanted him to get barbequed by Zuko. And for some reason, no matter how much I adore him or how many times I watch the whole series, whenever I watch or deal with those first couple of episodes, that feeling comes right back. I'm pretty sure it shows in my writing. If it bugs you... well, I promise it's gonna go away sometime after Kyoshi Island, because that's about the point I stopped wanting him to die a flaming, horrible death and started to think he was kind of awesome instead. So bear with me, please, and do not hesitate to leave feedback! I thrive on it.


	3. Chapter 2: One Hundred Years of Solitude

**A/N-** I promised this on Monday. I am sorry. I am a bad, bad fanfic writer who doesn't update when she says she will. Forgive me?

I should warn you that a significant portion of this was written at 2 a.m. and posted unedited.

* * *

~*Book 1: Wind & Water*~

Chapter 2: One Hundred Years of Solitude

"_While you were building your empires  
__I was still sleeping  
__While you were setting your woods afire  
__I was still dreaming..."  
-Vienna Teng_

* * *

Katara's morning had been... strange.

All things considered, nothing _that_ out of the ordinary had occurred. She had still risen before the sun, though admittedly, this was not all that difficult considering how late the sunrise was getting as winter deepened. She had still gone about her chores more or less as usual, and she had still gotten an earful of Sokka bemoaning the loss of their fish the afternoon before. Really, there wasn't much reason for her to feel so on edge.

She did, though, and it had everything to do with the newcomer to the village.

Outsiders in the village were not unheard of. They received visitors from neighboring Water Tribe communities, and from time to time merchants from the Earth Kingdom would sail down to trade. Aang, though, was _different_.

As Katara glanced up from the cook-fire she was tending, she caught sight of the younger boy at the center of the tiny village, surrounded by a little cadre of children. Aang had been introduced to her grandmother and the rest of the villagers that morning, and he had quickly charmed the little ones. For a teenage boy, he had an unexpectedly playful manner that had won them over, and the result was the flock currently trailing around behind him everywhere he went. To his credit, he didn't seem to mind in the slightest.

She chewed her lip thoughtfully. If she was honest with herself, Aang was fascinating to her. There was something entirely alien about him that piqued her curiosity in the very worst way. It was a lot of little things, actually. For a start, he seemed weightless. Literally weightless, if his behavior the day before was any indication, and metaphorically as well. He didn't act like somebody who had grown up under the threat of Fire Nation raids.

For another thing, his accent was strange. Katara had encountered Earth Kingdom traders with their soft consonants and rapid speech, and Fire Navy raiders whose brisk and precise words always felt stilted to her, but she had never heard an accent quite like Aang's. His emphases fell in unlikely places and he drew out his vowels. She couldn't place it for the life of her, and she knew she wasn't the only one trying; more than once, she had noticed Gran-Gran watching him when he spoke, a thoughtful look on her face.

What had Katara most intrigued, though, was that he still hadn't said anything further about himself. Beyond his name, he hadn't said a single thing about his identity or where he had come from. The mystery was what was keeping her tense, more than anything else. Aang had a right to keep his secrets if he wanted to, but not knowing was driving her crazy. He and Appa were definitely the most interesting things to happen in their little community in quite some time, and she wanted to know everything.

Across the village, Aang was gleefully introducing his gaggle of tiny followers to Appa, who was tolerating the little hands pulling at his shaggy coat remarkably well. Katara couldn't help but be amused when the boy suddenly found himself with an armful of young Water Tribe girl when Appa snorted, panicking the child who had been sitting on his head and causing her to leap on top of Aang, nearly strangling him in the process.

"He's certainly an unusual boy, isn't he?" Gran-Gran asked.

Katara jumped, not having realized that her grandmother had approached her. "He's something, alright."

The elderly woman glanced at the stranger, who was struggling inefficiently to extricate himself from the clutches of the terrified toddler still clinging to his neck. Then her sky-blue eyes turned back to Katara. "And he still hasn't said anything about how he ended up inside that iceberg?"

"Not to me. But I've been busy for most of the day, so we haven't had much chance to talk."

Gran-Gran raised an eyebrow. "Well, perhaps you should take a little time to get to know our guest, Katara," she suggested.

For once, Katara had no trouble hearing through what her grandmother was saying to what she actually meant. She was being told _Be a good hostess_, and also _You had better make sure you haven't brought a Fire Nation spy into our village_.

"I will, just as soon as I'm done with this."

"I may be an old woman, Katara, but I'm perfectly capable of tending to a pot of boiled fish," Gran-Gran pointed out. Her expression softened slightly and she added, "Go on. I can see you're curious about him."

Katara's glance shot between the laughing Aang and the cooking that was to have been her chore, and then her mind was made up. "Thanks, Gran-Gran!" she exclaimed, and she hurried to catch up to Aang.

* * *

If Katara was distracted by the presence of her new friend in the village, her brother was arguably more so.

Sokka watched out of the corner of his eye as his sister approached Aang and gently pulled him away from his disappointed little followers. Tension rolled through his shoulders as he watched the two of them wander in the direction of the low outer wall of the village. Something about this whole affair smelled very fishy (and not in the good way). The newcomer had given no satisfactory explanation for his presence within the iceberg, or even what he intended to do now that he was free. If he had nothing to hide, why would he be so secretive?

If it had been up to him, Sokka would have slipped away right then and there to trail Aang and Katara as they walked, but unfortunately for his peace of mind, he had other business to attend to. With a heavy sigh, he turned back to the village's defense squadron...

Or, in plainer terms, a rather pathetic group of young boys and old men. Four years previously, the last of the Tribe's warriors had set sail to aid the Earth Kingdom in the war against the Fire Nation. The only men left behind were those such as Sokka who were too young at the time, and the very elderly men who would have been of little use in a fight. They were a ragtag bunch but Sokka, as the oldest of the young ones, had found himself unexpectedly in a position of authority and he was going to make them a force to be reckoned with if it killed him. It didn't matter that most of his warriors were under the age of ten and the rest were over the age of sixty. He wasn't going to let his village stand defenseless the next time a Fire Nation commander came looking for easy pickings.

"Alright, men," he said in his most authoritative tone, "Who remembers the weak points in Fire Navy armor?"

He was met with a long line of blank faces. Sokka restrained another sigh. All his old warriors were falling asleep in their seats, and the younglings... well, most of them were off tailing Aang around yet. It was going to be a long day.

* * *

When Sokka found the opportunity to talk to his sister, it was nearly dinnertime. Katara was helping to repair a damaged igloo when he found her, but the importance of her task didn't stop Sokka from grabbing her by the elbow and leading her what he felt was a safe distance away.

"Sokka! What are you doing?" she protested.

"What has he said to you?"

Katara's brow furrowed in confusion. "Who do you mean?"

Sokka rolled his eyes. "Kiviuq. Who do you think? I mean Aang! I saw you two getting awfully buddy-buddy this afternoon. What did you talk about?"

"What does it matter to you?"

"Humor me."

"_Not _that it's any of your business-" Katara said with a pointed look, "-but we talked about a lot of things."

"Anything specific?"

She sighed. "Appa mostly, and I explained about the winter herring-crab runs."

Sokka's eyebrows rose as he gave his sister a dubious look. "You really expect me to believe that you get one-on-one conversation time with the first new person in the village in almost a year, and you talked about _herring-crabs_?"

"Aang was curious. What's it to you, anyway? Why do you care what Aang and I talk about?" she asked.

"What if he's a Fire Nation spy?" Sokka suggested forcefully.

Her eyes widened. "No way!" she said immediately. "Aang couldn't possibly be Fire Nation. He's too... too-"

"Too what? Too nice?"

"Well, what if he is?"

Sokka snorted. "Come on, Katara. This is the Fire Nation we're talking about. Who knows what kind of tricks they have up their sleeve? I wouldn't be surprised if they sent someone like Aang, somebody who seems all innocent to get on our good sides and spy... and then the second they find out there's still one water-bender left at the South Pole- BAM! Instant Fire Navy raid."

Katara's lips had gone pale from how hard she was clenching her jaw. "Aang wouldn't do that," she insisted.

"How do you know?" he asked.

"I just... I just _know_, okay?"

He gave her a measured look. "Forgive me if I'm not totally convinced by your flawless argument," he said. "Just think about it, Katara. I know you want to trust this guy, but keep your eyes open. And whatever you do, _don't_ let him know you're a bender!"

She shook her head. "You're paranoid, Sokka."

"Better paranoid than dead," he said as he walked away.

Katara returned to the family she had been assisting before he pulled her aside, doing her best to put the conversation out of her mind. But even as she lifted the heavy blocks of ice back into place (with as much help as her untrained bending skill could provide her), she couldn't help but think about what her brother had said.

* * *

The Southern Water Tribe, Aang reflected, was not at all what he had expected.

He had spent the whole morning in the company of the children of the village, and he'd passed most of the afternoon in conversation with a toothless old man who couldn't be a year under eighty. The children had been fun to play with, and the man who had proudly identified himself as Komi One-Leg (with a knowing tip of his head to indicate the wooden carving that had replaced his right leg from the knee down) had entertained him for hours with stories of his misadventures on the high seas, but Aang couldn't help but feel there was something... _wrong_. He couldn't quite put his finger on what it was, but as he sat down with the villagers to a community supper, the feeling continued to plague him that something very strange was going on.

"Here you go," Katara said, handing him a plate full of what appeared to be boiled fish.

Aang frowned. "I, um... I don't eat meat," he said.

Her blue eyes widened. "Not at all?" she asked, surprised.

"No."

He wasn't used to explaining this to people, having grown up surrounded by fellow Air Nomads. Even when he had been taken on excursions across the other nations, his fellow monks had accompanied him and he'd never had to explain their tradition of abstaining from consuming flesh. It was taken for granted by everyone he'd ever met. But the people of the Southern Water Tribe didn't seem to know this. Actually, come to think of it, he wasn't sure if they even knew he was an Air Nomad. Yet another thing to include on the list of things that just didn't add up.

"Oh," Katara said, giving him an apologetic look. "I'm sorry. I didn't know. I can get you something else." Before Aang could say another word, she was out of her seat and scurrying off in the direction of the cooking area. He followed her with his eyes until she disappeared behind a tent.

As strange as this whole day had been, meeting Katara was definitely an upside to this whole misadventure. It had never been difficult to earn Aang's friendship, but Katara had wormed her way into his affections remarkably quickly, even by his standards. She was nice, a lot nicer than the other people in the village except maybe the children, and he liked talking to her. He hadn't had much chance to spend time with her that day, given how busy she was, but she'd found time early in the afternoon to seek him out and talk to him. Aang had many friends across the four nations, Swati and Kuzon and Bumi and the rest, and he already knew that Katara was going to be one of those names he would remember long after they had parted ways.

If he was honest with himself, Katara was a big part of the reason he was already dreading leaving. He knew he would have to return to the Temple sooner rather than later, but he didn't really want to. He liked her company, and he liked the freedom of anonymity here in the Southern Water Tribe. Despite the feeling of wrongness he kept sensing, despite the searching gaze of his new friend's grandmother and despite Sokka's scrutiny, he was enjoying himself. This was what he'd been searching for, after all. He'd wanted a chance to clear his head and despite his slightly unorthodox method of arrival, that was exactly what he was getting. When he was helping Komi mend ripped fishing nets, when he was talking to Katara, things seemed to make sense again. He didn't feel like Aang the Prodigy or Aang the Avatar, he just felt like... Aang.

It was nice to be comfortable in his own skin again.

Katara returned then, interrupting his musings, and plopped down next to him. "Here," she said, offering him a bowl.

Aang sniffed experimentally at what she had handed him.

"Stewed sea prunes are kind of an acquired taste, but we don't really have a lot that isn't meat-based," she said, "especially during the winter."

"Thank you, Katara," Aang said, and he meant it. He meant it a little less a few seconds later when he put a spoonful of the soupy concoction in his mouth and was rewarded with a taste somewhat like wet bison fur, but he managed to smile as if he were enjoying it. When Katara grinned back, he decided it was worth it.

Neither of them spoke again for a few minutes. They, like the rest of the village, were preoccupied with eating quickly in order to take shelter inside before the swiftly-setting sun robbed their arctic home of what little warmth it had.

It was Katara who broke the silence first. As Aang was choking down another spoonful of the disgusting prunes, she asked, "Aren't you cold?"

"Huh?"

"I've been wondering all day," she explained. "You're obviously from somewhere north of here, and you're wearing such thin clothing... aren't you freezing?"

Aang shrugged. "Temperature never bothers me."

Katara laughed incredulously. "You're kidding!"

"Nope. I've never had a problem with different climates."

"Have you traveled a lot?" she asked.

"I sure have," he said. "All over the world."

"Everywhere but the Fire Nation, I bet," she guessed.

_What an odd thing to say_, Aang thought. That creeping feeling that something was _wrong_ assailed him, but he pushed it away. He was too caught up in the admiring look Katara was giving him; it was too nice to be appreciated for things that had absolutely nothing to do with bending. "No," he said. "I've been to the Fire Nation, too."

Her exotic blue eyes widened. "What's it like there?" she asked.

"It's beautiful. It's always warm, and they have the best festivals in the summertime."

Katara's expression closed off very suddenly, and for the life of him Aang couldn't understand why. "Sounds interesting," she said.

"That's the life of a nomad," Aang said, trying to bring back the levity of the conversation.

"I guess so."

The two of them talked quietly for the rest of the meal, but it felt a little stilted. Aang could see that Katara was more attentive to her own thoughts than to what they were saying. He wondered what he had said wrong to make her withdraw, but he couldn't think of anything.

Eventually, he gave up trying to make her smile again, and excused himself to say goodnight to Appa, who had been unceremoniously exiled beyond the village wall after he had sat on an igloo.

Perhaps if he had stuck around, he would have heard Katara repeat thoughtfully to herself, "The life of a nomad, huh?"

* * *

The sun had set only half an hour before, but the temperatures had plummeted dramatically in that time. It was not a good climate for fire-benders, but Prince Zuko had never been the kind of person to let a little thing like the weather stop him.

Zuko had been in a foul disposition earlier in the evening. He had intended to reach the shores belonging to the Southern Water Tribe in the early afternoon, but a strong headwind and rough seas had slowed the progress of his little steam-ship enough to keep them at sea until sunset. The delay had not pleased him in the slightest, but now that they were on land and making tangible headway on his quest, Zuko felt his mood lifting.

It had been quick work for his crew, small though they were, to surround the first town (if the cluster of ice-huts and foul tents even justified the name) they encountered once they reached land. It hadn't taken much longer for them to storm through the lanes and pull the Water Tribe citizens from their dens and out into the starlight, each of them forced down on their knees in the snow with his crew's spears at their backs.

Zuko strode between their ranks, not so much as glancing at them. He didn't need to look at them to get what he wanted from them.

"Lieutenant Jee!" he called.

"Yes, Prince Zuko?" the officer responded.

"Have you found our target?"

"No, sir."

At this moment a youth of about sixteen who had somehow managed to evade capture came hurtling out from behind an ice-wall, bone spear raised in a mad charge against Zuko, whose back was to him. "Death to Fire Nation scum!" he cried, desperate light flaring in his eyes.

Zuko might not be a particularly skilled fire-bender, but he was an extremely proficient martial artist otherwise, and disarming the teenager required nothing more than an elegant sidestep and two quick jabs with his open hands. The Water Tribe boy went down in the snow with a heavy grunt, and before he even had a change to get his breath back, Zuko had grabbed him by the throat and hauled him to his knees. He bent over to stare his would-be killer in the eye even as he allowed his palm to heat with a few licks of flame. The boy whimpered as his neck was scorched.

"Where is he?" he demanded.

Despite the pain he was in, the younger boy showed courage. "Kiviuq of the Water Tribe will never bow to Fire Nation scum!" he vowed.

Zuko raised his one good eyebrow. "Really?" The temperature of his palm against his opponent's skin rose several degrees, eliciting another groan of pain. "Where is the airbender?" he asked.

"I don't know any airbender!" Kiviuq insisted.

The disfigured prince tossed him away in disgust. "If you won't talk," he said, "I'm sure there's someone here in this godforsaken village who will!" He turned to the three short rows of tribal women and children who had been lined up for his perusal by his crew.

He strode back and forth in front of them, studying them intently, using the unsettling effect of his scar to his advantage as he made sure each of them got a good long look at him. "If you tell me where the air-bender is, I will spare your village," he informed them. "If you resist me, I will not hesitate to burn your homes to the ground, and continue on to do the same to every last village in the South Pole until I find him."

Kiviuq, forgotten and left to his misery, looked up. His blue eyes showed renewed determination, and while Zuko preoccupied himself with the rest of his village he pulled himself to his feet and slunk toward the edge of the firelight. By the time the shrill screams of an old woman filled the air, he was trudging across the tundra, tears in his eyes.

* * *

The next morning, Katara awoke with a suspicion fully formed in her mind.

It was, on the surface of it, a wholly ridiculous idea. If she'd had any intention at all of confiding in her brother, she knew he would say that it was just her own wishful thinking making her believe things that weren't possible. Except, to her mind, the conclusion she had drawn was the only one that made any sense. After she'd talked to Sokka the previous day, for awhile she'd begun to have serious reservations about Aang. As much as her heart was telling her that she could trust him, she couldn't deny that Sokka had had a point. With that in mind, she'd approached Aang at dinner and tried to probe him for a little information; she hadn't known what to make of the fact that he openly admitted he had been to the Fire Nation. Surely a spy wouldn't admit any affiliation at all with the Fire Nation? Unless that was just what a spy would want you think?

All in all, Katara had gone to bed feeling terribly confused. Her new friend was a contradiction inside a mystery, and she really didn't want to find out that he was actually a Fire Nation spy on the hunt for waterbenders.

Then somehow, during the night, all the strange things about Aang had coalesced into a firm picture in her mind. The way he moved as if his feet barely needed to touch the ground, his tattoos, the strange things he had said, his shaved head that marked him rather obviously as a member of some kind of religious order, his (reportedly) flying bison, that comment he'd made about being a nomad... all of it had settled into place and Katara was sure she knew the truth.

She dressed quickly in the pre-dawn darkness and didn't even bother to tame her dark curls back into their usual braid before hurrying outside. She had to talk to Aang.

It took her several minutes to find him. He was not in the tent that had once belonged to Bato, but a little searching revealed him curled up against Appa's side, fiddling with a fishing net which he seemed to be having more success tangling than repairing.

"Hi, Katara!" he said brightly, smiling up at her. "You're up early."

"So are you," she pointed out.

His grin just got bigger in response.

"Aang, I have something very important to ask you," she said.

The smile slipped noticeably. "What?" he asked warily.

"Are you-" Katara paused, swallowed, and took a deep breath before continuing. God, she hoped she was right. "Aang, are you an airbender?"

The anxious look he'd had on his face vanished, chased away with a chuckle. "Is that all? Of course I'm an airbender!" he replied.

It was the answer she'd been looking for, but Katara couldn't help but feel amazement that it was actually the answer she'd received. "That's... _incredible!_" she exclaimed. "I can't believe it!"

"What's so strange about that?" he asked. "Haven't you ever seen an airbender before?"

She sat down next to him. "No. I've never met _any_ other benders before... well, except firebenders, but that's different."

Aang's eyebrows drew together in a look of concerned confusion. "Why do you keep saying things like that?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know, whenever you mention the Fire Nation, you just... I mean... why are firebenders different?"

It suddenly occurred to Katara to wonder just how long Aang had been frozen. Was it possible that he didn't...?

"Aang," she said gently, "just how long do you think you were trapped in that iceberg?"

He shrugged. "Dunno. A few days, maybe a week?"

Katara hesitated. "I think it might have been a lot longer than that. The Water Tribe and Earth Kingdom have been at war with the Fire Nation for decades."

"What?" he exclaimed. "That can't be right!"

"Almost a century ago, the Fire Nation attacked the other nations without any warning," she said.

Aang looked stricken, and Katara felt sick to her stomach. This wasn't news she was happy to bring, and now that her suspicions about him had been confirmed, the worst was yet to come. "You asked me if I'd ever seen an airbender before," she said, hating that she had to be the one to tell him this, to witness his ordinarily smiling face come crashing down. "No, I haven't, Aang. No one has. The Air Nomads all vanished a hundred years ago, and no one has seen an airbender since."

"That's... not possible," he said, shaking his head slowly.

She reached out and laid a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry, Aang."

He stared at his knees for a very long minute. Then, abruptly, he looked up at her. His face gave no clue what he was thinking. "What about waterbenders, though?" he asked. "Surely you must know some waterbenders!"

"No. The last of them were captured by the Fire Nation when Gran-Gran was still young, and we haven't had contact with the Northern Tribe in years. I'm the first waterbender to be born at the South Pole in almost thirty years," she told him, baffled by his change of direction. Then again, maybe it wasn't so surprising. If she'd just received that kind of news, she wouldn't want to think too hard about it, either.

"But how did you learn?" he asked.

Katara shrugged. "I haven't, really. Most of what I know I've just had to figure out for myself."

Aang's eyes widened. "You have to find a teacher!" he said.

She chuckled bitterly. "That would be great, but how exactly am I going to do that? The North Pole is the only place where there might be anybody who could, and I have no way to get there."

"But I do!" he said. "Or did you forget that I have a flying bison?" He patted one of Appa's six massive legs fondly. "I can fly you to the North Pole."

Katara snorted. "Yeah, right."

He gazed at her earnestly. "No, I'm serious. Why not? Why don't we go to the North Pole, Katara?"


	4. Chapter 3: Airbenders and Invaders

**A/N-** Thank you for your patience and continued support!

* * *

~*Book 1: Wind & Water*~

Chapter 3: Airbenders and Invaders

"_Turn the page I need to see something new_  
_For now my innocence is torn_  
_We cannot linger on this stunted view_  
_Like rabid dogs of war.._."_  
_

-Poets of the Fall

* * *

"_I'm serious. Why not? Why don't we go to the North Pole, Katara?"_

Katara gaped at Aang. What he was suggesting... it was crazy. She hardly knew Aang. She had never even been past the boundary waters, let alone as far away as the North Pole. To just run away, leave her family behind and set out on a fool's errand to find a waterbending master, would be completely crazy.

It would also be exactly what she wanted to do.

She looked at Aang, staring up at her with earnest eyes, and at that second she wanted to leap on back of his crazy flightless flying bison and take off for the other side of the world in the company of a boy who wasn't much more than a stranger. The world was calling out to her, all the adventures she had ever dreamed of. The chance to be a real, proper waterbender at last was oh so tempting. And her curiosity about Aang the Airbender didn't hurt things either.

But...

"I can't."

"Why not?" He was visibly crestfallen.

She sighed, leaning back against Appa's hairy foreleg. "I wish I could." She met his eyes squarely, trying to let him know just how much she meant it. "But... they need me here. My village- my family- we're barely scraping by as it is. The arctic isn't the easiest place to live at the best of times, but with all of the men away at war, it's even harder. And I'm the only water-bender left. Trained or not, I'm the only person who can protect a canoe on a fishing trip during the winter ice pack. As much as I would love to go to the North Pole, I know where I'm needed."

"Oh," Aang replied. "That makes sense."

"Sorry."

He looked up in surprise. "Why are you apologizing?"

She shrugged. "You just seemed so enthusiastic about it... I hate to say no."

"Hazard of being a nomad," he said lightly. "I guess I forget that not everybody has such an easy time packing up and moving on."

"Mm-hm."

Silence descended between them. The quiet was not awkward, but it wasn't entirely comfortable, either. Both teens were absorbed in their own turbulent thoughts, and it seeped into the atmosphere between them. Katara stewed in her own uncertainty. The temptation to change her mind was powerful, responsibilities be burned. Aang, for his part, was preoccupied with staring at his knees, an unreadable expression on his face.

After some minutes, he looked up. "Katara?"

"Yeah?"

"You were just kidding, right? About the war, I mean. That was a joke, right? It was kind of a bad one, but-"

"Aang, I wasn't joking."

Katara's heart broke for him, watching him try to rationalize his way out of the impossible situation he was in. Coming to a snap decision, she stood up and offered him her hand. "There's something you should see," she told him as she helped him to his feet.

Aang paused just a moment to retrieve something from Appa's saddle: a staff about a foot taller than he was. Katara was curious, but decided not to ask, instead leading him off in the opposite direction from the village. She wasn't sure if this was the best way to handle the situation, but she felt that Aang needed to see tangible evidence of the war he had slept through. If she were in his place, she would have a hard time accepting it, too. But if he was going to live in the world as it was now, he was going to have to know. He couldn't just ignore it, even though Katara knew that she herself would happily do so if that were possible.

"Where are we going?" he asked presently.

"We're almost there." And she was right. They rounded a cliff of ice shaped into fantastic patterns by wind and water, and came face to face with... _it_. The _Moesashi_.

She chanced a look at Aang's face, and saw his eyes widen and his jaw literally drop. "What _is_ that?"

"It's a Fire Navy ship," she informed him. "When my Gran-Gran was young, and there were still waterbenders at the South Pole, the Fire Nation made a lot of raids on us to capture them all, which is why I'm the last. During one of the attacks, our waterbenders trapped this ship in the ice and drove the rest away. We left it here as a monument to the warriors who lost their lives defending us."

Everything about Aang bespoke devastation, from his drooping shoulders to his downcast eyes, and Katara suddenly wished she could turn back time and make the choice not to tell him after all. "This can't be happening," he whispered, staring at the snow with overbright eyes. "This isn't right." He whipped around to look at her directly, something very wild in his face. "One hundred years?"

She nodded sadly. "One hundred years."

"Hasn't anybody tried to stop it?"

Katara was seized with an urge to laugh. "Who could? The Fire Nation won't stop, and the only way we could end it would be to surrender and we can't do that! The only person who could possibly have ended this was the Avatar, and he vanished a century ago, too." A sudden thought occurred to her. "Say, Aang... you're an Air Nomad. Do you have any idea what happened to him?"

Wary, he asked, "To who?"

"To the Avatar. The last one was an Air Nomad, right? Did you know him?"

Aang's posture was inexplicably tense and he shuffled his feet. "Was I ever introduced to him, you mean?"

"Um... I guess," Katara said, confused by his evasive question.

He shrugged. "I wasn't ever formally introduced to the Avatar, no," he said.

Katara sighed. "Oh. It was worth a shot. I just thought... well, I've always thought that somehow, some way, the Avatar would come back to save us."

Aang rubbed his head. "Sorry."

"It's not your fault. I guess I just got my hopes up again, with you being an airbender that you might know."

He looked away and gazed out across the snow. The sky to the east was lighting up, the very rim of the sun's bright disk peeking over the horizon and casting a slight glitter on the tundra. Darkness still prevailed in the sky, but streaks of pink and gold were creeping across the landscape.

"A hundred years... I can't believe it."

She put a hand on his shoulder, needing to reassure him however she could. "I'm sorry," she said earnestly. "I can't even imagine how you must be feeling."

He nodded. "I don't really want to think about it right now."

"Then we won't."

He gave her a little smile, those silver-grey eyes lighting up with gratitude. Katara couldn't help but smile right back. Even with the weight of the war suddenly dumped on him, there was something about Aang that was just... easy. She wasn't sure how to explain it beyond that. He just seemed free. Maybe it was a nomad thing.

"Hey Katara, want to know a secret?" he said.

Another abrupt subject change, another sidestep of the looming issues trying to weigh him down. Yep, definitely a nomad thing, she decided.

"Um... sure?"

"I can fly."

She laughed out loud. "You're not serious!"

"Yes I am," he insisted. He held his staff out from his side and with a flick of a finger, hidden panels on the side snapped open to reveal wide orange sails, like a large cloth fan. "I can bend the air currents around my glider and fly. Want to see?"

"Of course! What kind of question is that?"

He gave her a sly grin, caught onto the little handholds at the front of his glider, and leapt into the air.

True to his word, rather than crashing back to earth, he rose up into the air. He did an elaborate series of twists and loop-the-loops in the sky above her head, silhouetted against the late sunrise. Katara laughed in delight.

"That's amazing!" she called up to him.

Aang gave her a broad grin and she returned it twofold, irrationally glad that he wasn't dwelling on the bad news she'd had to give him.

"Race you back to the village!" he called down, before turning sharply and zooming off over the tundra.

Katara's mouth dropped open in outrage. "No fair, you cheater!" she cried, and took off at a dead sprint after him. She was hopelessly outmatched, with Aang in the sky and herself stuck on the ground, but she was at least able to use her waterbending to give herself a little bit more traction against the patches of ice that might have caused a non-bender to slip and fall.

By the time she arrived at the village, she was breathless and red in the face from the sting of the wind, her hood having long since been blown back by her momentum.

The other villagers were up and about by the time they returned, meaning that they were witness to Katara crashing headlong into Aang as he touched down unexpectedly in front of her. He threw an arm around her and she grabbed onto the front of his tunic and somehow they managed to stay on their feet, but it was a very near thing. They steadied, and for a split second they were silent, staring at each other in surprise.

"Sorry," Aang said solemnly.

Then Katara dissolved into giggles, laughing almost too hard to breath, and Aang laughed with her, both of them oblivious to the rest of the village staring at them.

"You are... _ridiculous!_" Katara gasped out, still leaning on him. "Why would you come down right in front of me?"

"Ka-Katara," he said through his laughter, wiping at his eyes and making a valiant effort to sober himself, "while I was up there, I thought I saw someone out on the tundra."

"It's probably Sokka," she said.

"It didn't look like Sokka, though," he said.

Katara frowned, her mirth fading away. "Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure."

"Maybe we should go look," she said.

He nodded, and pointed inland, away to the south. "Whoever it was, he was off that way." He closed his glider with a snap, and together they walked in the direction he had indicated, ignoring the small collection of villagers who were gaping at them.

Despite the late scarlet sunrise staining the horizon it was still fairly dark and difficult to see, and what was visible was blinding from the reflection of sunlight on the ice, so Katara studied the landscape carefully, afraid to miss anything.

They walked for several minutes before Katara asked, "How far away was the person you saw?"

"A quarter mile from the village, it seemed like. I'm sure he was around here somewhere," Aang replied. Then he let out a low, frustrated groan. "This is _impossible!_"

With no warning, he simply jumped. He rocketed upward into the sky a good forty feet, blowing Katara's hood back yet again with the blast of air he left in his wake, then drifted far too slowly back to earth.

"I found him," he said simply. "Forty yards that way. He seems hurt."

He took off at a run, Katara right on his heels. They raced through the icy landscape. And there, just barely concealed behind the low rise of a hill, was the man Aang had spotted. He was eighteen and handsome, with hazel eyes that were striking and unusual among the blue-eyed Water Tribe peoples. His hair, which might ordinarily have been bound up in a warrior's wolf-tail, was a loose and scattered mess that hung in his face. But Katara knew him.

Seeing the young man's legs about to give way under him, she dashed forward and attempted to catch him in her arms as he fell. She didn't quite manage to hold him up, but at least she cushioned his fall as he went down. She landed in the snow with a heavy _oomph!_ and, once she'd got her breath back, sat up and turned him over.

"Kiviuq?" she asked in a horrified tone. "Oh no, what happened?"

"Fire Nation," Kiviuq choked hoarsely. His voice was strained and weak and Katara saw why immediately. His throat was encircled in a ring of vicious burns that were suspiciously hand-print shaped. In addition, his otherwise pleasing features were marred with several small cuts and a large swelling bruise above his left eye. Worse than his injuries, though, was what he was wearing. He was only wearing a thin sleeping tunic, and from the looks of his greying, swollen feet, he had been barefoot out in the cold for a long time.

Katara's eyes widened. "He's barely conscious," she said, looking up at Aang with an edge of panic in her expression. "His village is almost eight hours' walk from here, and he's come all this way injured."

Aang nodded. He bent down and lifted Kiviuq. Although the older boy was sturdily built and taller than him, Aang displayed little difficulty in carrying him. "Come on," he said. "Let's get him back to the village."

* * *

By the time they had managed to carry Kiviuq back to the village, he had completely passed out. Aang carried him into the medicine house, where two middle-aged women, under the direction of one of the elders, began to dress the young warrior's wounds.

Katara was left to fret outside. She sat down on the ground, drawing her knees up to her chest and hugging her arms around them tightly, Kiviuq's quiet pronouncement still rattling inside her head. Between his burns and his words, there was no doubting that the Fire Nation had attacked their neighboring town, and considering how long it took to walk from there to here, she knew it had to have happened in the evening the night before. She prayed that they would take whatever they had come for from Kiviuq's village and be on their way, but she couldn't shake the image of Fire Navy ships cruising through the icy waters, steadily and silently approaching.

Aang emerged from the tent and dropped down beside her in the snow with a sigh. "The woman- Anyu?- said they should probably be able to patch him up."

She let out a soft sigh of relief. "Thank goodness.

"His injuries aren't as bad as they looked," Aang informed her. "It's mostly just exposure, but his feet are pretty frostbitten."

Katara glanced down at Aang's bare feet. He hadn't put on his strange, soft little shoes yet that morning. "You should put on your shoes," she suggested.

He followed where she was looking and shrugged. "Nah. They're all the way over in Appa's saddle. Like I told you, cold doesn't bother me much."

"Benefit of being an airbender?" she asked with a shaky grin.

He nodded. "Definitely a benefit of being an airbender."

"So it's true, then?" a voice interrupted. "You are an airbender, Aang?"

The two sitting on the ground looked up to see Sokka towering over them, arms folded.

Aang nodded. "Yeah, I'm an Air Nomad."

"How is that possible? They've been extinct for generations!"

Katara didn't miss the wince from Aang as Sokka tossed out this pronouncement. "Well, Aang is one," she replied hotly, buying Aang a moment to recover. "He even showed me some airbending!"

Sokka rolled his eyes. "Great, as if one bender around here wasn't enough. Now we've got two of you to waste time playing with magic when there's real work to be done."

"It's not magic!" Aang protested, echoing Katara's thoughts before she even had a chance to give voice to them.

The older boy waved a hand. "Whatever. Not important right now." He refocused on Katara, who was getting to her feet. "Listen, Old Komi told me you guys found Kiviuq out on the tundra. What's going on?"

"We're not sure. He was pretty much unconscious by the time we found him, but he has some burns, and he said something about the Fire Nation."

"The Fire Nation?" Sokka parroted, visibly perturbed.

Katara nodded. "He fainted after that, but I think something must have happened over in his village."

"I've got to talk to him!"

"Wait, Sokka, you might not want to-" the airbender began.

But Sokka had already brushed past them and entered the medicine house.

"...go in there," Aang finished lamely.

Exactly five seconds later, Sokka was outside again, looking a little green around the gills. Throwing an irritated look at Katara, he said, "Let me know the second he's in a fit state to talk," and stormed off.

Katara shot Aang a look of confusion.

He grimaced. "They were gonna remove the dead tissue from the burns on his neck. Not pretty."

She nodded her understanding. She'd seen the process before. It really wasn't for the weak of stomach.

With Sokka now gone, Katara felt more comfortable sitting, and slid back down onto the ground. Aang joined her.

"So, that guy..."

"Kiviuq."

"Yeah. Is he a friend of yours or something?"

Katara shrugged. "Something like that." She was silent for awhile, staring at her knees thoughtfully. "He's a few months older than Sokka, which means he's the oldest man left in the Southern Water Tribe whose hair hasn't turned white yet. My father led all the other men away to war more than four years ago, but guys like Sokka and Kiviuq were too young to go, then."

"So you guys grew up together, then?"

"More or less. I..." She hesitated, the words bubbling on the tip of her tongue, demanding to be spoken. And somehow, it seemed easier to say them to Aang, a relative stranger, than to someone who had known her her entire life. "Can I tell you a secret?"

He nodded. "I'm great at keeping secrets."

"I'm turning sixteen in a few weeks. That means I'll be old enough to get married. And... it's kind of been hinted that Kiviuq would be an acceptable suitor."

Aang's eyebrows raised, but he said nothing.

"And... I'm not sure how to feel about that," she added, finally confessing the thing that had been sitting on her chest ever since Gran-Gran had started hinting at _what a handsome young man that darling Kivi was_. "I mean, Kiviuq's always been nice to me, more than most people... but I don't really know him. If he made me a betrothal necklace, I don't know if I could accept it."

She couldn't meet his eyes, feeling both weightless and drowned under her own honesty, and simply let her words hang there in the air.

"You're meant for more than that," Aang said suddenly, breaking the silence.

At that, she had to look up at him. "What? How do you know?"

"Well, don't _you_ think you are?"

He had a point there. Maybe it was because, for as long as she could remember, her waterbending had singled her out, but Katara had never felt like she quite fit the traditional roles expected of the women of the tribe.

"Well... yeah," she admitted.

"Then, you are."

"Simple as that?"

"Simple as that."

She let out a low chuckle, completely nonplussed at his matter of fact approach to a matter that had been plaguing her for over a year. "You certainly have an odd perspective on things, Aang."

* * *

The first thing Kiviuq saw upon his return to consciousness was the face of Hakoda's daughter. She had never looked more beautiful to him. His head was muzzy and he was disoriented, unsure of where he was or what had happened after he fled the firebender's attack, but she was there and he couldn't bring himself to care about much else right at that moment.

"Ka...tara?" he mumbled, wincing at the rasp he could feel in his throat.

Instantly, she was by his side, pressing him back down even as he tried to struggle upright. "Shh," she cautioned. "Save your strength, and try not to talk too much. You've been through a lot."

"You really found me?"

"I did."

"Thought I dreamed that."

Although he could see worry in her eyes, she made an effort to smile. "No, we found you. And you're lucky, too. If you'd been out there much longer, you might have frozen to death. As it was, you were feverish for a few hours. You had us all worried."

"Were _you_ worried?" he asked.

Were he thinking a little more clearly, he might have been more cautious, but all he was really aware of was her warm hand that still rested on his shoulder and the soft numbing of sensation in his limbs that let him know he'd been dosed with one of Anyu's healing teas.

Katara let out a soft snort. "Of course I was worried," she said. "My friend comes stumbling in with burns on his neck and frostbite everywhere? What did you expect, Kivi?"

Kiviuq smiled drowsily. "You... called me Kivi. Y'haven't called me that since we were children."

"I think you're delirious," she replied. "I call you that all the time."

With her free hand, she reached up and checked his forehead. "You feel a little warm," she informed him. "I don't think your fever's quite gone yet.

The sensation of her soft fingers caressing his numbed skin was a pleasant one. Kiviuq felt himself drifting back towards unconsciousness, but this time a pleasant sleep rather than a pain-induced faint. On impulse, he grabbed her hand and brought it down to cradle his face, turning his head and pressing a soft kiss into her palm.

"'M gonna marry you, K'tara," he mumbled.

He was vaguely aware of her hands pulling away, and he moaned softly, wishing she would come back.

"Lie still. Sokka's been waiting to talk to you," she informed him. "I'm... I'm just gonna go tell him you're awake."

Kiviuq nodded unhappily, and fell back into a hazy slumber.

* * *

The shortening days meant that it was nearly nightfall by the time Kiviuq regained consciousness a second time, and Sokka insisted on speaking to him alone.

Many members of the village waited with more than a little apprehension to find out what had happened to the young warrior from their neighboring village. Katara was among them, while Aang stood at the back of the crowd with Appa, uncertain of his place among these people but nonetheless as curious as the rest of them.

Some twenty minutes after entering the little anorak where Kiviuq lay, Sokka emerged with stormy countenance.

"What happened? What did Kivi tell you?" Gran-Gran asked

"Late last night," Sokka said gravely, "Kiviuq's village was attacked by Fire Nation soldiers. They were led by a young commander with a facial scar. They dragged the women and children from their homes and gathered them in the center of the village. Kiviuq tried to defend his people, but we all know how hard it is to fight a firebender singlehandedly."

Gasps of horror and sympathy arose from the villagers.

"Kiviuq was able to escape, and walked through the night despite his injuries to warn us of the danger. He said that the leader of these monsters said some very strange things." Sokka paused for a minute, then said, very deliberately: "He demanded that an airbender be handed over to him."

At this, several heads turned to Aang, who was staring at Sokka in stricken surprise. Many had witnessed his display of flight that morning, and those who hadn't seen him firsthand had been informed of it by Katara who, despite her worry over Kiviuq's safety, had found time enough to spread the news that an airbender was in their midst.

Sokka continued, "Kiviuq believes that this commander is delusional, searching for someone who cannot possibly exist. Unfortunately, we know better."

Murmurs raced through the crowd and Aang, nervous, stepped a little closer toward Appa's reassuring mass.

The young warrior sighed, his stony expression slipping a little into something that might possibly have been remorse. "Aang, I'm sorry, but you're going to have to leave."

"_What?_" It was Katara's voice that cried out. She pushed past a pair of older women to face her brother, standing between him and Aang. "You're going to banish him, just like that? For something that's not even his fault?"

"I am protecting our village," Sokka said, not backing down an inch.

"You can't just do that!" she protested. "Aang has done nothing wrong! The whole time he's been here he's been helpful and respectful, and I've never seen the little ones so happy and carefree in all their lives than when he was playing with them yesterday!"

Sokka's shoulders slumped. "I'm not saying he's a bad person," he said, sounding tired. "But-"

"But we cannot risk the safety of our entire village to protect a near stranger, no matter how much we may like him," Gran-Gran interjected, filling in where Sokka left off.

Katara seemed close to tears as she faced her grandmother. "Not you, too, Gran-Gran!" she cried.

"Katara, I'm sorry, but I believe your brother is right in this."

It was at that moment that Aang finally spoke up. "It's alright, Katara," he assured her.

She spun around to face him. "_No_ it's _not!_" she exclaimed. "They can't just treat you like this! Where will you go?"

He gave her a sad little smile. "I guess I'll go to the North Pole after all."

Tears really did well up in Katara's eyes at that. "Then... then..." She took a deep breath, struggled with herself, and shouted, "Then I'm going with you!" Gasps went up from everyone present as she ran to his side.

"Katara!" Sokka called in a strangled voice.

"Come on, Aang," she said, pointedly ignoring him.

Aang stared at her in shock. "Katara..." he said softly, moved beyond words at the power and sincerity of her gesture.

Gran-Gran called out, then. "Katara, my girl, please don't go!"

At the sound of her grandmother's voice, she hesitated. It was only for a moment, but Aang saw the tiniest flash of uncertainty cross her features.

"I can't let you do this," he told her, stepping between her and Appa and blocking her path to the sky bison's saddle. "I can't let you give up your tribe... your whole life! Not just for me."

She wavered. "But... didn't you say I was meant for something more?"

"Yes."

"What if this is it?" she whispered. "What if I'm meant to go with you? What if this is my something more?"

He shook his head. "This feels wrong. Forcing you to choose between me and your family can't be the right thing to do, Katara."

She wiped at the tear tracks that had earlier run down her cheeks in her anger, but the acceptance of what he was saying was written all over her face. Abruptly, she threw her arms around him and hugged him tight. "I know we haven't known each other long, but I'm really going to miss you," she whispered in his ear.

"I'll miss you, too," he replied.

After a long moment, Katara released him. "I'm sorry they're banishing you like this. It's not right."

"I'll be fine," he promised. "I'm tougher than I look."

With a graceful display of airbending that drew gasps from the watching villagers, he spun through the air to land on Appa's head. Aang gave a quick flick of Appa's reins, and the great animal turned ponderously. Boy and bison trudged away to the west, heading across the ice as if chasing the swiftly-setting sun.

Katara turned away and walked back to join her family. She kept her head down, but even if she had not, none of the other villagers would have met her eyes. Although she stood beside her grandmother, she did not turn around and she did not raise her eyes, refusing to watch her new friend leave.

Old Komi One-Leg, who stood nearest Hakoda's children, leaned over to them. He whispered in Sokka's ear, "I think you may have made a grave mistake, young'un."

Sokka set his jaw, and did not look away, watching Aang until the dying light hid him from view.

* * *

In truth, Aang did not go very far before stopping.

As he had told Katara, he was tougher than he looked, but that didn't mean he had any real inclination to hike miles across frozen tundra after nightfall. Therefore, once the last of the sun's light had disappeared from the horizon and he was left with only the brightness of the stars and a crescent moon to guide him, he started looking for a place to bed down for the night. Eventually, he took refuge in one of the little caves carved into the ice cliffs by wind and water erosion. It was small, just big enough to house himself. He curled up there with Appa huddled just beneath him, and stared back the way he had come. He could just make out the shapes of anoraks and igloos that marked the village.

His head was awhirl with everything that had happened that day. For most of the day he had successfully distracted himself with other thoughts, but left on his own, he could no longer avoid thinking about it.

He had been trapped for a hundred years in an iceberg. A whole century had passed while he had slept peacefully beneath the sea. He wasn't sure how he was supposed to feel about that, but the side effects had not escaped him. It had occurred to him more than once over the course of the day that his long hibernation meant that everyone he ever knew was dead or very, very old by now. He was not at all prepared to think too hard about that, and all day, he had successfully kept the idea at bay by demonstrating complex airbending moves for Katara and the little children of the village.

What Katara had told him about the other Air Nomads troubled him deeply. He certainly didn't believe his people were extinct, as Sokka seemed to think, but he was nonetheless concerned. They would almost certainly have retreated to the safety of the Temples, which would more than explain why no one had seen them for so long, but how would his peaceable people have been affected by a century of war?

War. With the Fire Nation. How had _that_ happened? He knew the monks had been concerned about some kind of threat to the world; that was why they had told him his identity so young, after all. Was it possible that the Fire Nation's attack on the other nations was what they had been worrying about?

Aang sighed. It was just too much to take in all at once. He had messed up, badly, and he knew it.

But there was one upside. As selfish as it was, he was glad that all this had happened, because he had gotten to meet Katara.

The novice waterbender fascinated him. He'd only known her for a few days, but he already felt as though they'd been friends forever. Aang had always been one to make friends quickly, but this was something different. He _liked_ her.

Aang had never been interested in girls, as such. He'd had female friends from all four nations, but they had been _friends_. Even once he'd started to grow up, he'd just never had the same reaction to girls as some of his friends. He had found the whole routine silly, actually, as he watched his friends start to trip all over themselves when a pretty girl crossed their paths. It had been Aang's intention, until he found out he was the Avatar and was informed in no uncertain terms that such a choice was denied to him, to become a dedicate of the Temple and live a celibate, purely spiritual life. He just wasn't interested in girls the way his other friends were, and that disinterest combined with his deep-seated spirituality had made it an easy choice (at least until he was denied even the option, that was).

And then Katara had come crashing into his life (or maybe _he_ had crashed into _hers_) and he was beginning to understand what all the fuss was about. She was funny and interesting and pretty, and despite himself, he was captivated. There was something in her that was strong and bright that drew him in.

Well, too late now, he supposed. He had been summarily banished by her brother. He wasn't sure what he'd done to make Sokka distrust him so much, but he held no ill-will against the older boy for sending him away. Sokka had just been doing the only thing he could think of to protect his people, and Aang could understand that. He still couldn't believe Katara's impassioned defense of himself, though...

Suddenly, the dark landscape was lit up by a blinding flash of fire.

Aang sat upright, startled by the light, eyes straining to make out the source.

He didn't have to wait long. From the direction of the village, another flare shot upward. It took Aang a moment to process what he was seeing, but eventually he realized the village was under attack. Apparently Sokka's attempt to ward off a Fire Nation attack by sending him away had not been successful.

This was his fault. For whatever reason (and Aang didn't have to think too hard to guess what that reason might be), the Fire Nation wanted him found. The village was being invaded because of him. He had to help.

"Appa, you stay here!" Aang commanded, leaping down from his ice cave and seizing his glider from Appa's saddle as he dropped past.

The instant his feet touched the ground, he took off. Sprinting at speeds only achievable by an airbender, he streaked over the frozen ground, sending up a flurry of snowflakes in his wake as he made a beeline for the village he had just left behind...

* * *

**A/N-** Any chance of a review? I love them very much and it makes me write faster, knowing that there are people interested and waiting. If there's something you love, tell me. If there's something you hate, tell me that, too, and I'll see if there's anything I can do to make it better.


	5. Chapter 4: The Avatar Returns

**A/N-** This chapter was ridiculously hard to write, for some reason. I think it's because there was lots of Zuko. Zuko is hard to write. I love that boy, but he is _hard to write_. Except when he's around Mai. I've noted that he's much easier to write when Mai's in his orbit. Reason #27 that Maiko is awesome. Aaaaaanyway, I'm making a real push now to get through these first three episodes so we can move on from setup and delve into meatier episodes which I am much more interested in. And battle scenes that are anything more than plot devices. Seriously, I promise I can write battle scenes. I've done it before, with reasonable success. But you really can't tell from this chapter.

Now, to reply to the guest reviews that I can't respond to privately...

**Phooka-** I didn't even notice that! Guess that's what I get for going unbeta'd. Thanks for finding my little oversights.

**Guest-** Thanks for the vote of confidence. I'm having a really fun time with this, so I'm glad you approve thus far!

(another) **Guest**- Yes, I am doing all the books. I haven't yet decided if each book will get its own separate story or if they will all be a part of this single piece, but I'm definitely tackling the entire series. I've got all of Book 1 outlined so far and it's going to take me a bare minimum of 40 chapters, so this is one hell of a monster undertaking, but I knew that going in. Hope you're willing to bear with me over the next... oh, year and a half should do it, I'd imagine. *grumbles about being a broke student who has to work ridic numbers of hours to pay back her student loans, thereby interfering with my writing time*

**John-** Never fear, I don't intend to sacrifice the humor for the sake of darkness. If Victor Hugo can manage to make the most depressing story ever somehow also uproariously funny, I'm sure I can manage to retain some of the wit of the source material in my piddly little fanfiction. I'll leave it to you to be the judge of how well I succeed.

(still one more)** Guest-** I do indeed intend to include quite a bit of original material in this. The core idea of the story- and to a certain extent the core idea of each episode- will remain the same more or less. However, I reserve the right to tweak certain ideas and events quite a lot. My retelling of The Blue Spirit, in particular, will probably be quite a great deal of fun. Where fun means "let's see if Melon can make you cry."

Thanks to everybody for your continued support of and interest in this story! I now have about a month free of that blessing/curse which we call undergraduate study, so updates should be a bit quicker for the next few weeks. **Also, Vienna Teng is absurdly talented and if you don't know her music you need to. This is a woman who has flawless poetry for lyrics and writes musicals about Buddha. What more do you want?**

* * *

~*Book 1: Wind & Water*~

Chapter 4: The Avatar Returns

"_You're a one-man shift in the weather,_  
_You're the woman who just won't sell,_  
_Climbing up and ringing the bell.._."

-Vienna Teng

* * *

The evening had been a frustrating one for Katara, but as a hot burst of fire shot above her head and forced her down into the snow to avoid being burned, she had the fleeting thought that it was better than this. She would happily trade months of her fellow villagers whispering about her and avoiding her gaze if it would just make the firebenders leave.

More than a dozen soldiers had swarmed into the village several hours after Aang had vanished into the setting sun. Sokka had done his best, but he and the three young boys (not one of them older than eleven) who had stood up with him were no match for the firebenders, and now they were subdued at the soldiers' feet, and little Chugach was cowering at the foot of a tent, the skin on his hands blistered and peeling from a fireball he had only barely managed to shield from his face. Most of the villagers had been herded together near the outer wall and Katara was sick to her stomach to realize how easy it had been to tear her whole world down. Even Kiviuq, woozy and unwell as he was, had been hauled out of the medicine house and deposited in a slump next to Old Komi.

The Fire Nation soldiers stopped hurling fireballs around as their commander approached.

Katara let out a gasp when she got a clear view of him. He had removed his horned steel helmet, revealing a face that might have been handsome were it not for the huge swathe scarred flesh that covered most of the left side of his face, and his unmarred right face revealed an utterly cold, compassionless eye. But that was not what horrified her. What shocked her was the fact that he had Sokka grasped by the wolf-tail, and was hauling her struggling brother bodily through the snow. She had lost sight of Sokka during the short-lived battle, but she had hoped that by some chance, he might pull off a miracle. No such luck, apparently.

The young commander tossed Sokka contemptuously into the mass of sweating, trembling bodies that comprised the entire village. Sokka let out a soft groan, but to Katara's relief, he did not seem to have sustained serious injury to anything but his ego.

"I am Zuko, Crown Prince of the Fire Nation and heir to the Burning Throne," the scarred young man proclaimed haughtily. "I am looking for someone. If you help me find him, no further harm will come to your people."

"Yes, we know," Komi said in his quavering old voice. "This young 'un gave us fair warning!" He jerked his thumb at a dazed-looking Kiviuq.

Zuko gave the young warrior he had brutalized the evening before a scarce glance before looking away dismissively. "I know the airbender was here. Tell me where he is."

"We don't know any airbender!" Sokka protested.

At exactly the same moment, Katara cried out, "We'll never tell you where he is!"

Sokka shot an irate glance at his sister.

Zuko zeroed in on her, his liquid-gold eyes narrowing intently as he approached her with all the feral grace of a large cat. "So you do know where he is," he said.

Katara got to her feet, refusing to let this enemy prince intimidate her with his height.

"Where has the last airbender gone?" he asked in a surprisingly gentle tone. He made a visible attempt to soften his severe expression. "It's alright, you can tell me. He's only an old man by now, after all."

Katara felt a shudder of pure loathing run through her. If he had been anyone else in the world, she might have bought his softening act, but he was Fire Nation and a member of the royal family at that. His games didn't fool her; they disgusted her.

"I will never tell you anything," she declared fiercely.

"Tell me!" Zuko cried. Apparently he had very little patience, Katara surmised, because his attempt at lulling her lasted an even shorter time than the pitched battle that had preceded it. She flinched away despite herself, so harsh was his outburst.

She took a deep breath, relaxing her clenched fists and preparing to try to bend the snow around them, something, _anything_ to tip the balance of this confrontation...

And quite suddenly, with a rush of wind that nearly blew out the flames the firebenders carried in their palms in lieu of torches, Aang appeared in their midst, running faster than should be humanly possible. He came in too fast, and tried to slow himself down in time but tripped over his own feet in the process and ended up careening right into the Fire Prince, sending the both of them to the ground.

As Aang tumbled gracefully back to his feet, Katara's heart leapt. They were saved!

"Katara, are you alright?" he asked, not taking his eyes off the teenager sprawled in the snow.

"Yeah, fine!" she called back.

"Thanks for coming, Aang," Sokka said, and Katara was gratified to see the sheepish look on her brother's face. Served him right for banishing Aang so hastily!

Zuko had by this time righted himself, and Katara couldn't help but be gratified at the furious expression on his face. He was so angry that the spots of snow that clung to his tunic and armor sublimated into steam. He leveled a look at the boy who had bowled him over, and his eyes suddenly narrowed.

"Those tattoos..." he breathed. His face twisted in a mask of incredulity. "Airbender tattoos."

"That's right," Aang replied, staring down the older boy. His expression was stern and angry, and Katara couldn't help but feel that it looked very out of place on his usually open face.

Zuko was visibly confused. "You're the one I've been searching for? _You're_ the Avatar?"

Katara felt her stomach bottom out forcefully, and she was tempted to shake her head because surely she had snow in her ears and hadn't heard right! The Avatar? What? Aang couldn't possibly be what Zuko thought. He was too... Well, actually, Katara wasn't sure what, but whatever it was, he was too much of it to be the Avatar.

But Aang was an airbender. The _last_ airbender. Who had been stuck in an iceberg since before the war had started. He'd been trapped since right around the time the Avatar had vanished.

Oh. Oh _wow_. Oh spirits, it all _fit!_

And now Aang was looking at her. She met his eyes, and she still half-expected to see confusion or some sort of denial in them, but all she saw was guilty panic.

"Aang?" she breathed.

He broke from her gaze and turned his attention back to Zuko, and it was a good thing he did because the firebender chose that moment to attack. The older teen hurled an arm outward in a vicious strike, unleashing a burst of fire from his clenched fist. Aang nimbly dodged and the fire struck the snow where his feet had stood and dissipated into steam.

The attack was enough to galvinize the villagers to action. As Aang deflected a second fire blast from the princeling with a deft twirl of his staff, Sokka leapt to his feet and charged the nearest soldier. Following fast on his heels, four of the young women of the village teamed up to tackle another soldier, making up for their inexperience by overwhelming him with sheer numbers.

As for Katara, she watched the battle between Aang and Zuko, breathlessly hoping for an opening she could use to tip the fight in Aang's favor, but none presented itself. She was tempted to try to waterbend the snow beneath his feet, but their duel was at a delicate balance as it was and she didn't want to risk interfering and somehow making things worse. A part of her knew that she should forget the combat in front of her and help her fellow villagers try to drive off Zuko's soldiers, but she just couldn't make herself turn away. More shamefully, years of being warned to hide her bending and never let the Fire Nation know that a waterbender had been born at the South Pole after all kept her frozen to the spot, watching the conflict play out between Zuko and her new friend.

Aang moved gracefully through the air, easily dodging or deflecting Zuko's fire blasts. Although the whole fight could not have lasted more than a minute, to Katara it seemed like an eternity as she watched her new friend being repeatedly attacked. It became apparent quickly that Aang himself was not attacking, but simply avoiding Zuko's erratic blows.

Zuko, obviously frustrated with the lack of engagement with his opponent, tried a different approach. He dropped low and swept a foot out in a broad arc, creating a long horizontal lash of fire that was too broad for Aang to deflect. The airbender did a graceful backflip and avoided the arc of fire with ease, but as he came back down, a scream from behind him broke his concentration. He peered over his shoulder and saw the people of the village engaged in hopelessly outmatched combat with the Fire Nation soldiers, obviously losing but refusing to give up, fighting because of him. Worse, a woman of about thirty had been standing a few yards away when he had dodged Zuko's last attack, and although she had tried to get out of the way, her legs had been burned and her skirt was on fire. She dropped to the ground and Old Komi scrambled over to her on his knees, helping the sobbing woman to smother the flames...

Aang had only a moment's notice. A brush of heat against his face alerted him to the danger and he dropped. Zuko had taken advantage of his moment of distraction to launch another fireball at his head, and it was only his airbender reflexes that had saved him. He hit the ground and rolled, bounding back to his feet before Zuko could attack again, and held forth his staff in a gesture of surrender.

Zuko acknowledged his relent, and raised a hand. "To me!" he said in a carrying voice.

His soldiers quickly crowded behind him in formation. Those who had been more intensely involved in combat with the villagers- if their valiant but sorely untrained struggle could really be called combat- disengaged by means of ominous displays of firebending, which was more than enough to make the Water Tribe citizens to back down.

As his warriors gathered behind him, Zuko leveled his gaze at Aang, waiting for the airbender to speak.

"If I go with you, will you promise to leave everyone alone?" Aang asked, never breaking his opponent's amber gaze.

"You have my word of honor," he replied.

Aang closed his eyes and sighed. "Okay."

Zuko gave a jerk of his head, and two of his soldiers moved around him to flank the shorter boy. With a prod from their spears, Aang was driven forward toward the shore, where the great black bulk of the Fire Navy ship they had arrived on was silhouetted against the stars.

Katara, who had watched the battle and subsequent exchange from the sidelines, found that she could remain still and silent no longer. She ran after them, reaching them just as they reached the ship. "Aang, no!" she cried out. "Don't do this!"

Her friend stopped in his tracks and glanced back at her. "It's okay. I'll be fine," he promised.

But after he was led up the ingress to the warship, Katara could see that his expression was grim. She felt tears stinging, but held his grey-eyed gaze until the rise of the hinged prow concealed him entirely from sight. Only then did she allow the moisture in her eyes to spill over.

"No," she whispered.

* * *

They kept Aang secured on the deck until after they were out of sight of the village. As the ship churned out toward the open ocean, however, Zuko stopped barking orders at his crew and returned to confront Aang where he stood still flanked by two armed guards, hands bound behind him. Aang hated having his hands tied more than he hated being captured. He wasn't used to feeling so... powerless. He could still bend without his hands, but he was limited, and having to wait for the right opportunity to make an escape was not sitting well with him. The monks had always told him he could stand to be more patient.

The Fire Prince carried Aang's staff with him, having confiscated it immediately when he was brought on board. When Zuko approached, he held it out before him, considering it thoughtfully. "This staff will make an excellent gift for my father," he said contemplatively. His bright gaze shifted to Aang and an unpleasant sneer crossed his face. "I suppose you wouldn't know of fathers, being raised by monks."

Privately, Aang thought of Gyatso and suspected he probably knew a lot more about fathers than this Prince Zuko.

"Take the Avatar to the prison hold, and take this to my quarters."

He shoved the staff in the direction of the tubby silver-haired man who stood watching, who immediately passed it off to the nearest sailor, who merely sighed and trudged away.

As for Aang, he was grasped roughly by the shoulder and pushed ahead of his guard below deck. He was led through a narrow maze of low-ceilinged corridors which were lit by dim red lanterns and smelled vaguely of ash and liquor and urine. He did his best to remember the turns and concentrated on the burgundy-and-pitch back of the soldier leading him, waiting for just the right moment. Aang was no fighter, but he was more than confident that he could get away from these two bozos and free himself. He just needed an opening. And maybe a distraction.

"So..." he said tauntingly, "I guess you guys have never fought an airbender before."

"Silence!"

"I bet I could take you both with my hands tied behind my back..."

* * *

When the sun rose a few hours later, the village was alive with frenetic activity. Young children worked in groups to repair the damage to the outer walls, while the women and elderly went about repairing other damages left in the wake of the firebenders' attack. One citizen, however, was not contributing to the cleanup effort.

Katara stood on the shore staring out across the iron-grey water. She was still somewhat in shock, trying to assimilate the enormity of what had happened.

After Sokka had banished Aang the evening before, Katara had resigned herself to thinking she would never see him again. Or at least, she had tried to. It had been strangely difficult to reconcile herself to the idea of never seeing her funny little friend again, for all that they'd only known each other a couple days. But she'd been starting to become accustomed to the idea when the firebenders had arrived and pulled them all from their yurts and igloos. And the next thing she knew, Aang was back... only for her to find out that he wasn't _just_ Aang the Airbender at all. A part of her still thought the disfigured Fire Prince must have been mistaken, but then she would remember the guilt and regret in Aang's face when he looked at her, and she knew that Zuko had not been wrong. Aang was the Avatar.

The Avatar she had been dreaming of her entire life, the hero she'd hoped would rise to save them all from the Fire Nation... was Aang. It was an idea next to impossible to wrap her mind around. He seemed such an unlikely candidate to be the bearer of the kind of power the legends attributed to the Avatar. And yet... hadn't she thought right from the start that there was something special about him? Maybe a part of her had recognized something in him, subconsciously known that he was more than just what he seemed.

And now he was gone. Just like that.

But this wasn't the end of it. Katara had not helped with the repairs to the village, but she had not been idle, either. In secret, avoiding the paths of other people as much as possible, she had loaded up a canoe with supplies, and it bobbed in the water just past the ice where she stood. Now all she needed was the courage to step into it. What she was preparing to do was insane, but she knew she had to do it. She couldn't leave Aang- sweet, harmless Aang- to the dubious mercy of the Fire Nation. She didn't know how she intended to catch up to Zuko's ship. She didn't know what she would do when she got there. But she was going after them nonetheless. She took a breath and put one foot into the canoe...

"What are you doing?"

She almost fell into the water in surprise, but steadied herself and looked back. It was Kiviuq. He still looked pale and she could see him visibly shaking, but he stood tall.

"You should be resting," she admonished. "You've taken a pretty serious beating these last few days."

"Katara, _what are you doing?_"

She restrained a sigh. "What does it look like I'm doing?"

"It looks like you're running away from home."

"I'm not running away from anything!" she protested. "I'm going after Aang."

Kiviuq snorted. "What? You're kidding, right?"

"I am not."

As he realized she was dead serious, the expression on his handsome face sobered. "Katara, do you have any idea how stupid and dangerous that is?"

She bristled immediately. "No, I don't. Do explain it, won't you?" she bit out in a voice tinged with sarcasm.

"Oh come on, 'Tara," he said in exasperation. He closed the distance between them and laid a hand on her shoulder. "Just running off into open water after a steam ship you haven't got a chance of catching up to in the first place? And even if you could find them, what would you do then? That Zuko guy is ruthless. He'll never let you take the Avatar back alive!"

Katara clenched her fists, resisting the practicalities of what he was spewing with all her might. Yes, it would be hard, but she couldn't let that stop her. She shrugged off his hand. "Don't call me Tara! Besides, Aang saved us all!" she reminded him. "I owe it to him to go after him."

"I know how you feel."

"You do?" she asked, amazed.

Kiviuq nodded. "Completely. I mean, he's the Avatar. He's the world's best hope for defeating the Fire Nation. Of course you feel a responsibility to make sure he's safe, but-"

"Responsibility?" Katara burst out. "This has nothing to do with the Avatar! I mean- I guess it does, but... but... he's _Aang!_ He's my friend! I can't just abandon him! And that goes double now that I know he's the Avatar."

He shook his head. "Katara, please don't do this."

"Give me one good reason not to."

She regretted the words immediately, because Kiviuq leaned toward her and gathered her in his arms, and Katara realized that he meant to kiss her. In the split second after the realization, Katara had a clear moment to think that she absolutely did not want her first kiss to be like this, some desperate attempt by a boy she didn't love to convince her not to leave. She turned her head sharply, and Kiviuq's lips ended up meeting her ear. For an awkward moment, he lingered there, apparently attempting to work out what had gone wrong. Then his arms dropped and he backed away, flushing scarlet from embarrassment.

"Oh," he said.

"Kivi, I-"

"I, um... I think I'd rather you didn't call me Kivi right now, Katara."

"Oh."

He sighed, and couldn't meet her eyes. "I guess I always thought... well, okay. Look, if you don't want to stay for me, what about the rest of your village? They need you. It's floe season. How are they going to fish without you to guide the canoes safely through the ice?"

"The Southern Water Tribe survived for thirty years without waterbenders before Katara was born. It will survive again if she leaves."

Kiviuq whipped around and Katara leaned past him to see her grandmother standing there, bearing a pair of bundled up sleeping rolls in her arms.

"Kanna?" Kiviuq asked tremulously.

The old woman gave him a look, and he took a hasty step back. She refocused on her granddaughter. "Katara... for years I have been concerned about your fixation on the Avatar. Your confidence that he would return has worried me. I had lived so long without hope, and I did not want to see your own hope slowly eaten away by time and disappointment as mine was. But instead, you have brought hope back to life, my little waterbender. Of course you must go after your friend."

Katara threw her arms around her grandmother in a tight hug. "Thank you, Gran-Gran," she whispered in her ear, feeling her eyes sting from the bittersweetness of her grandmother's reassurance coupled with the accompanying goodbye.

Releasing her youngest grandchild, Kanna said, "But that doesn't mean I'm letting you go alone. Where is your brother?"

"I don't know," Katara confessed. "Somewhere around the village, I guess. I haven't seen him since Aang was taken."

"I'm right here!" Sokka's voice suddenly rang out.

The three of them looked up to the ridge above them and to their amazement, they saw Sokka standing there with, of all things, Appa's reigns clutched in one hand. The great furry creature stood beside him, looking quite disgruntled about the whole affair.

"Sokka!" Katara cried. "What are you doing?"

He shrugged. "I knew you'd want to go after him, and there was no way we'd be able to catch up to him, so I went to find Appa. This fuzz-monster might be a pain, but he's definitely faster than a canoe."

Katara scrambled up the slope and hugged her brother tightly as well. "Oh Sokka!" she exclaimed, an overwhelming feeling of love for her brother welling up in her at that moment.

"Yeah, yeah, let's just go save your boyfriend."

Feeling deeply uncomfortable at the vastly untrue insinuation, and not least because Kiviuq- Kiviuq who had just tried to _kiss_ her!- was standing right there, Katara snapped, "He's not my boyfriend!" She shot a glance out of the corner of her eye to where the older teen stood, face red again, staring at the snow. She had a suspicion that when everything had calmed down and she had a chance to think about all this, she would feel guilty. But for now, there was just too much to do to think about love and romance and boys she probably didn't love.

"Yeah, whatever," Sokka said.

The siblings exchanged more warm hugs with their grandmother, who gave them each her blessing. "Aang is the Avatar. He's the world's only chance. You both found him for a reason. Now your destinies are intertwined with his," she said solemnly.

Sokka mounted Appa, settling himself into the saddle, which Katara took as a clear indication that she was going to be steering this rescue mission. Before she climbed on Appa's head, however, she was stopped by a hand on her shoulder. It was Kiviuq.

"Should I... should I come, too?" he asked tentatively.

Katara shook her head. "Kiviuq, you're hurt," she told him. "Stay here, get well. And look after Gran-Gran for me, please?"

"Not that she needs it," he muttered, low enough that Kanna would not hear him.

Katara chuckled. "Still. You were right about one thing: losing Sokka and I will make things harder for our village. Keep an eye on things for us."

"No firebender's gonna get within twenty miles of your village," he said. "I promise."

"Thank you."

And just like that, they were off. Sokka and Katara (and Appa) off to save Aang and the world. Now if only they could figure out how to get Appa to fly...

* * *

**A/N-** I love reviews. You guys are already awesome at that. Stay awesome, my friends!


	6. Chapter 5: Embarkment

**A/N-** So... I was originally planning on posting this like two weeks ago. And then BAM! HOLIDAYS! followed closely by the universe going "Oh, you want your computer to work? AHAHAHAHA... NO. No, muthafucka, your battery is a piece of crap and your computer is gonna keep turning itself off randomly and you're gonna have to wait a week for the new battery to get shipped and the Geek Squad isn't gonna give you your computer back until the thing comes in and you don't have access to any other computers so I guess you're SOL, you bizarrely-named freak!"

So that's been fun. But my laptop!baby is back with me again, so hopefully that won't be an issue anymore. This chapter is not worth the wait, but hopefully it will suffice while I write more interesting things.

**Guest-** I can't say as you did... but frequent reminders are always welcome. *wink wink nudge nudge*

**Phooka-** Trust me, we haven't seen the last of Kiviuq. Gotta have some resolution on his story, after all! Plus, I just really like him. I know you guys haven't gotten to know him very well, but in my head, where all of him exists, he's a very fun character. And as you'll undoubtedly soon realize, we will indeed be getting some description of Zuko's failtastic transportation. A descriptive passage didn't really suit the tone of the last chapter, but you're right- an examination of the ship itself is necessary.

Thank you both for your reviews (and thanks again to all to whom I was able to reply privately), and I hope you continue to enjoy my attempts at paying homage to Bryke's greatness!

* * *

~*Book 1: Wind & Water*~

Chapter 5: Embarkment

_"Will you meet your mind where the night collides?_  
_Will you greet yourself when the sun arrives?"_  
-Foo Fighters

* * *

Kanna and Kiviuq stood side by side, watching the cumbrous mass of the sky bison pressing through the water with some speed until he and the two teenagers on his back were made small with distance.

"Aren't they supposed to fly?" Kiviuq wondered in a whisper.

As if in response to his question, the distant form of the great beast lifted abruptly free from the water, his snowy white and silver coat vanishing against the low winter sun. The sun shielded the flying bison from his view, and he held up a hand against the blinding light, squinting in hopes of one last glimpse of Hakoda's daughter as she soared away into the great unknown.

Kanna, shorter than he by nearly a foot and a half, reached up to lay a maternal hand on his shoulder. "Come on now, young man," she told him. "You're white as a ghost. We'd better get you back to the medicine house."

Kiviuq nodded in agreement, and turned to accompany her back to the village proper. Only a few yards from the shore he stumbled, his knees turning to jelly as a sudden wave of dizziness overwhelmed him, and it was only sheer stubbornness that kept him on his feet. Silently, Kanna offered him her arm. Kiviuq accepted her assistance, his cheeks flaming in embarrassment at the thought of a young warrior just coming into his prime having to lean on the flagging strength of an elderly woman just to stay upright. He hated that his ordeal had brought him so low, and he hated that he had to rely on Kanna, and he hated that Katara had flown away without a giving a moment's thought to the fact that she was breaking his heart in the process. Most of all, he hated that she had been right: in his present condition, he would have been useless to them if he had gone.

"How long do you think they'll be gone?" he asked as they made their slow path to the village.

She shrugged, a little lopsided because he was leaning rather more than he would like to think about her left shoulder. "I wouldn't dare to make a guess."

"But what will they do once they rescue the Avatar?"

"If I had to venture an assumption, I imagine they'll go in search of a waterbending instructor."

Kiviuq could not hide his surprise at that. "That would mean going to-"

"-to the North Pole, yes."

"But that's on the other side of the world!"

Kanna wore a dryly amused expression on her face. "Kiviuq, you are one of the few people who has never treated Katara differently because she is a waterbender, and because of that, you've gotten to see more of her true nature than most. Surely you know by now how much she wants to develop her gift? And now that she is in company with the Avatar, who will also surely be in need of a master to teach him, I doubt anything could stop her from traveling to the North Pole. Though," she added in a voice so low Kiviuq couldn't be sure that she actually intended him to hear her, "I am not sure how much help she will receive when she arrives."

"What do you mean?"

She looked up at him sharply, and he realized she really _had_ been speaking to herself at the end. "Oh, nothing. Just the bitter musings of a lonely old woman. Pay no attention to me."

Kiviuq, distracted by the dull throbbing that had taken up in the seared skin around his neck, was only too happy to comply.

* * *

Katara's eyes were trained on the horizon, scanning relentlessly for the first glimpse of the ship that already had several hours' head start on them. When Sokka had finally recalled the key to coaxing Appa into flight, she had spared but a moment to share in his utter (hypocritical) delight at the experience, before turning her attention to the seas ahead. By now she was running on pure adrenaline and using the time as they soared high above the steel-grey water to try and process everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours.

It all seemed just a little surreal. Aang, her friend, was the _Avatar_. Looking back, Katara didn't know why she was so stunned by that. Aang was an airbender, and airbenders just didn't exist anymore. It stood to reason that if any airbender still existed, he would be the Avatar. How she hadn't seen it right away was a mystery to her. Hadn't she known, right from the very first moment she met him, that there was something special about him?

If she was honest, she'd thought maybe she was developing a something of a crush on the boy she'd found in the iceberg. And maybe it wouldn't have been that surprising if that had really been what it was. After all, Aang was kind and he made her laugh more than she could remember doing since before her mother's death. So it was no surprise that what was really her instincts trying to tell her that she had found the lost Avatar, she had mistaken for the start of a crush. Somehow she had sensed that her unassuming new friend had been the one they'd all been waiting on, and she just hadn't realized it consciously until the truth had been revealed.

Well, now that she knew better, she wouldn't make that mistake again! It was actually kind of a relief, knowing that she wasn't crushing on Aang after all. For one thing... well, he was the Avatar, and she was pretty sure there was some kind of rule about that. And for another thing, she'd have felt very awkward about it if she'd started to develop feelings for someone else so soon after rejecting Kiviuq's advances. Despite the fact that she didn't return the feelings the older boy harbored for her, she couldn't help but feel bad that she'd turned him-

Her musings stopped dead in their tracks as she caught a glimpse of something in the water ahead. Shielding her eyes against the glare of the sun, she strained to make out what it was.

"There it is!" she called to Sokka. "We've nearly caught up to them!"

He crawled to the front of the broad saddle and leaned forward, peering in the direction she indicated. "Yeah," he said dolefully. "Now what are we going to do once we catch them?"

Now _that_ was a question Katara really didn't want to think about. In her mind, she envisioned a scenario of herself and her brother soaring in to heroically rescue Aang from the flaming clutches of the warlord who had abducted him, but realistically she had absolutely no idea how on earth they would pull such a thing off.

"We'll figure something out," she said.

"We're gonna die, aren't we?"

"Yeah, probably."

* * *

Aang, for his part, was presently thanking the spirits for his slender build. Being small and as lithe as an airbender could wish for, he had easily hid himself away in the air ducts that ran throughout the ship. It was hot and cramped and sticky, but it was better than being a prisoner.

He had intended just to retrieve his staff and be on his way but unfortunately he had gotten a little lost. The ship, though not over-large, was still big enough to get turned around in and the labyrinthine configuration of the interior did not help in the slightest. Every corridor looked the same, a low-ceilinged mass of rusting metal pipes, reeking of unwashed man. The only light came from dim red lanterns. After escaping from his guards with almost absurd ease, he had run through the hallways in search of Zuko's cabin, where his staff had been taken, but he had managed to get himself helplessly turned around. Being used to traveling exclusively by flying bison, Aang was already not particularly familiar with the interior of a ship. Adding to his bafflement, this hulking metal creation was unlike anything Aang had ever seen. The thought had crossed his mind that it must be a new design that had been created in the century he had slumbered beneath the ocean.

Twice now, he had come across stairs that seemed to lead up to the deck, but he was reluctant to expose himself so visibly before he had gotten his staff back (and with it, his best chance of escape). He could occasionally hear Zuko shouting up above, and the pounding footsteps of the sailor-soldiers hunting for him on the warrior prince's orders. That was why he had taken refuge in the ducts. It wasn't ideal, but it allowed him to move freely about the ship while still remaining concealed.

He knew, though, that he wouldn't be able to keep it up forever. Sooner or later, he would have to come out.

With a quick twist of his narrow frame, he wriggled around a tight corner and found himself facing a grate that opened onto yet another of the cabins he had been inspecting from above for the past half-hour or so.

This particular chamber, however, was distinct. The other cabins had personal effects and the usual detritus of living to identify their owners. This cabin, although clearly inhabited, was rigidly maintained in perfect order and without any distinct belongings or anything at all to identify it. The only things to distinguish it at all were the large tapestry bearing the Fire Nation insignia which hung over the cot... and the object of his search leaning against the wall beneath it.

"My staff!" Aang cried delightedly.

A stiff kick and a little squirming got him through the opening, and he bounded across the room toward his staff... but he had been too hasty.

"So that's where you've been hiding," Zuko's cold voice issued from behind him.

Aang whirled.

"I underestimated you. I won't be making that mistake twice."

The fire prince's fist lashed out and a fireball exploded at Aang's feet, causing him to leap backward with a startled cry. The first blow was rapidly followed by more, and it took every ounce of Aang's agility and acrobatic talent to evade Zuko's attacks in the narrow space. With a sharp pivot, Aang managed to put himself at Zuko's back, temporarily baffling his opponent's attempts to burn him.

It was his turn to underestimate Zuko, though, because he feinted to the right, then abruptly whirled to the left with a vicious flaming high kick that caught Aang in the shoulder. Only his reflexes saved him from being badly injured, as he ducked down into a smooth roll with the momentum of the kick. He leapt back to his feet with ease, only barely in time to deflect the fire blast Zuko threw at him with a blast of air that dispersed it.

His evasion tactics had put him in a position to snatch up his staff, though the short distraction gave Zuko an opportunity to unleash a burst of flame that came dangerously close to Aang's face.

Ducking away from the follow-up attack, Aang made a bid for freedom, but Zuko was between him and the door. He attempted to circle his opponent to bring himself closer to the exit, but Zuko saw immediately what he was trying to do and unleashed a wave of flame with a furious grunt. Aang was forced to flatten himself to the floor in order to avoid the attack. Thinking fast, he whipped up an air scooter and propelled himself up the wall and across the ceiling, coming down behind Zuko.

The prince turned on him, but Aang had the advantage now. A whirl of his staff sent Zuko's mattress hurtling across the cabin on a gale that would have made a hurricane envious. It slammed into him and knocked him straight into the wall. Without hesitation, Aang repeated the move, this time lifting both mattress and teenager against the ceiling with bruising force.

Without waiting to see the effects of his attack, Aang turned on his heel and fled. When he spied a stairwell leading upward just ahead, he felt his stomach melt in relief. A quick burst of trademark airbender speed later, and he was on the upper deck, launching himself on his glider into the open air.

But Aang had made a second mistake: he had left Zuko free. If he had stopped with just one attack, leaving Zuko pinned against the wall behind his own mattress, it might have bought him the few seconds necessary to be beyond his reach. However, the firebender, though undoubtedly left very sore and winded from his sudden encounters with both wall and ceiling, had been able to muster his resolve and chase Aang up the stairwell.

As Aang leapt out into space, Zuko caught him by the ankle. Together, the pair of them crashed down to the deck, Aang inadvertently kicking the firebender in the face as they landed.

Aang twisted away from him, aiming to evade him and take to the skies, but Zuko recovered faster than he had expected. Before Aang could make his escape, Zuko had him backed up to the side of the ship, using his staff to deflect the punishing barrage of flames the older boy was raining down on him.

Even then, though, Aang might have been able to make his escape if not for the distraction that arrived in the form of a familiar low roar. His attention drawn away from the advancing Zuko, Aang looked up to the skies to a most unexpected sight: Appa was soaring down from above, Katara at the reins and Sokka clinging to the edge of the saddle. His distraction cost him. A fireball burst just in front of his chest, and in moving back to avoid injury, Aang tumbled right off the edge of the ship.

Down he went, a good thirty feet, and when he collided with the water he felt all the breath leave him. Not only did his body slam into the water hard enough to stun him, the water itself was freezing, colder than anything he'd ever felt before even after being encased in ice for so long. Shocked, incapable of moving, he sank like a stone. Down into the depths he went.

But as he sank, a voice reached him. A young woman's voice, desperate, pleading, crying out his name. _Katara's_ voice. Katara... she... she needed him...

A sudden rush went through the sinking airbender, heating his skin and flooding his veins with ice. A ringing like struck crystal filled his head.

* * *

Katara watched in horror as the airbender fell from the ship. She leaned forward over Appa's broad head, urging him faster with the shift in her own body, but Aang was already in the water and sinking fast. Her heart stopped as she watched him disappear. He had been hit with a fireblast, and she knew how cold the water at the Pole was. Anyone who wasn't rescued within minutes of falling in usually died of hypothermia.

"Aang!" she gasped. "Aang... _Aang!_ AANG!" The desperate cry ripped from her chest. She felt so helpless, watching him vanish into the depths, too far away to help him even with her limited waterbending. Tears welled up in her eyes. The Avatar, her friend, _Aang was going to drown and she couldn't help him._

Suddenly, an unearthly glow filled the sea, and before she could blink Aang rose out of the water on the back of a tremendous waterspout. His eyes and tattoos glowed brightly as they had the very first moment she had seen him, and he moved with the fluid grace of a master waterbender as he landed squarely on the deck and swept the Fire Nation soldiers moving to apprehend him off the deck with a great wave that overwhelmed them all.

"Wow. Now _that's_ some waterbending," Sokka murmured.

Katara could only stare in awe. If she'd needed any proof that Aang was the Avatar, she had it as she watched him manipulate the waves with ease.

Appa touched down on the deck and Katara leapt from atop his head just as the light faded from Aang's eyes. He slumped to the deck with a low moan, but Katara was at his side in an instant. As she caught him up in her arms, she couldn't help but marvel. All her life, she'd been the only waterbender in the world as far as her people were concerned. But now there was Aang. He might be an airbender by birth and by nature, but he was a waterbender, too. She experienced a sudden sense of kinship with the young Avatar, a feeling of _sameness_ between the two of them. She wasn't alone anymore...

Aang shook his head blearily, obviously disoriented, and she surmised that he wasn't totally aware of whatever it was that he had done. "Hey Katara," he said faintly. After a look around to spy Sokka dismounting from Appa, he added, "Hey Sokka. Thanks for coming."

"Sure thing, kid," Sokka replied.

"I dropped my staff," he added, sounding dizzy.

Without hesitation, Sokka hurried across the deck to grab the item while Katara helped Aang to his feet. He staggered a little, but seemed to steady after that.

"Thanks," he said, grinning at her.

She couldn't help but smile back. "Quick, we'd better get out of here," she said. Aang nodded, and made a beeline for Appa, who greeted him with a happy rumble.

Meanwhile, Sokka had retrieved Aang's staff after a brief tussle with Zuko, whom he had summarily tipped overboard. As he turned back to return to his sister and the Avatar, however, he spied a group of firebenders approaching to relieve the group that Aang had swept overboard.

"Katara!" he yelled in warning.

She whirled around and, immediately apprehending the danger, attempted to freeze the soldiers in place. She only succeeded in trapping her brother by mistake, but after a tense couple of moments was able to correct her mistake and free Sokka from the icy manacles in which she had encased his shins.

Appa took to the skies, now bearing three passengers, and after one last fire blast hurled their way by a portly old firebender and easily deflected by a now-recovered Aang, they were on their way.

* * *

As Zuko clambered back up onto the deck of the ship, he stared about him in dismay. Three of his best officers were encased in ice, another four were flailing about in the frigid waters below, and the fore of his ship was buried under a mound of ice, the result of an avalanche touched off by the Avatar's deflection of his uncle's fire blast.

And all of this had been done by a scrawny boy who couldn't possibly be older than fourteen.

Zuko could practically feel his skin heating up as he struggled to contain his explosive temper. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, fighting for self-control.

"Good news for the Fire Lord," Uncle Iroh remarked in his maddeningly droll tone. "The greatest threat to the Fire Nation is just a boy."

Zuko let out a deep, furious growl and turned away from the sight of his uncle's inscrutable face. "Get those four out of the water!" he barked to Lieutenant Jee, waving a hand in the direction of the damaged foredeck. "Clear all this up! Then set a course for the shipyards east of Chin Village."

He whirled away from his bedraggled crew and stalked into the interior of the ship.

* * *

They were mostly silent for the time it took to cross the northernmost peninsula of the south pole's landmass, a span of about twenty minutes. Sokka was sulking, plucking at his damp boots and shooting Katara irritated glances. Aang himself was uncharacteristically quiet, focused on getting them to their destination. As for Katara, although she was desperate to speak to Aang, something akin to shyness held her back. It was ridiculous, really, because this was Aang and despite only knowing him for a short time, she'd always felt supremely comfortable with him. But he was also the Avatar, a fact that hadn't truly hit her until she'd seen him rise out of the depths, carrying the ocean with him. All her life, she had waited for the Avatar to return and save them, and here he was. He had _literally_ dropped into her lap, and even though logically she knew that this was Aang she was dealing with, she was still struggling to fit the two together in her mind.

Eventually they reached their destination, a collection of sea caves carved into the ice by winter storms and unusually high waves over the years. Sokka had suggested it as a hiding place, knowing that even if he were able to catch up to them, Zuko wouldn't be able to see them in such a concealed hide-out.

Once they had landed and climbed down from atop Appa, Katara finally felt settled enough to ask, "Aang... why didn't you tell us you were the Avatar?"

He had been patting Appa affectionately, but at her question, he froze. He didn't look up at her, and his voice was curiously flat when he replied, "Because I never wanted to be."

It wasn't the answer Katara had expected, and one she didn't know how to respond to. So instead of addressing what she suspected was something rather personal directly, she said, "Well, I guess it does explain an awful lot."

"No kidding," Sokka chimed in. "The iceberg stuff makes so much more sense now!"

Aang's mouth twisted up into a faint grin at that. "I guess so. Anyway, thanks again for coming after me." He let out a heavy sigh. "So, do you guys want me to take you home now?"

"What?" Sokka exclaimed.

"Are you kidding?" she replied at almost the same moment. "No way!"

He finally turned to look at them at her outburst. "What do you mean?" he asked. "Don't you have to go back soon?"

Sokka snorted incredulously. "Kid, yesterday I saw you walk face-first into a snowdrift because you weren't paying attention. Do you really think we're gonna let you just wander off into the middle of a war without any help?"

Aang's face suddenly looked hopeful. "What are you saying?"

"He's saying that we're coming with you, Aang."

"But what about your village? What about the herring-crabs and ice floes and... don't they need you guys?"

"You need us more," she said plainly. "Wherever you're headed, we'll come with you."

His expression absolutely lit up with delight. "Thank you," he said quietly.

Katara gave him a broad smile, pleased by how obviously happy he was.

"So anyway," Sokka asked, "Where are we going, exactly?"

Aang's joyful expression slipped a little. He still looked cheerful, but it was muted, tinged with concern and some sense of foreboding. "I think I need to go home," he said.

"And where is home, exactly?"

"The Southern Air Temple. It's about a day and a half flight from here."

"So if we leave at dawn tomorrow we should be across the water before nightfall, right?" Sokka guessed.

Aang nodded. "Sounds about right."

"And after we visit the Air Temple, what then?"

Katara broke in, "I think we should head for the North Pole. Like I told you before, the Avatar might be the only person who can end this war. Aang, the world needs you, and you need to master the elements to do that. Starting with waterbending."

"Not from what I saw him do earlier," Sokka muttered.

"Yeah, how'd you do that, anyway?"

A frown passed over his features. "I'm... not sure."

"Well, either way, Aang needs a waterbending teacher."

"We could learn together," he suggested.

Katara felt her heart flood with happiness at his eager suggestion. Together. There was someone she could learn waterbending with _together_. It was a new and precious idea, and the idea of working side by side with Aang to master their common element was enthralling. Somehow, she'd always imagined that if the Avatar returned, she would learn from him, but learning _with_ him suddenly seemed somehow better.

"Alright," Sokka was muttering. "Air Temple, then Northern Water Tribe." He was rummaging around in their belongings in search of the map he had brought with them. "If it takes us two days to get to the temple, and we keep it short there, we should be able to-"

Katara rolled her eyes. Sokka always had enjoyed having concrete plans. Turning her attention back to Aang, she informed him, "That really was some impressive waterbending, you know."

He shrugged. "I really don't know for sure what I did. One minute I was drowning and then the next thing I knew, I was... I..." Abruptly, he let out a violent sneeze that knocked him off his feet and propelled him to the back of the cave and out of sight.

A few moments later, a loud sniffle could be heard, followed shortly by "ow."

Sokka and Katara stared at each other with identical stunned expressions.

"Um... bless you?" Sokka said tentatively.

Aang reappeared presently, wiping at his nose with a disgruntled expression on his face. "Well _that_ was unexpected," he said.

"Speaking of waterbending," Katara muttered under her breath. "Aang, you're still soaked. You'd better put on something else while your clothes dry or you'll catch cold for sure."

"And if you always sneeze like that, that could be a problem," Sokka added.

"But I don't have any other clothes," he pointed out.

"I packed a spare parka," Katara informed him. "It might be a little big, but it'll keep you warm."

"Great!" Sokka proclaimed. "Katara, you get Aang sorted. I'm gonna go see if I can find anything we can use to start a fire. We'll stay here for the night, then head for the temple in the morning."

So saying, he headed for the mouth of the cave and, with a little tactical maneuvering, was able to swing himself up onto the ledge above where, presumably, he was able to reach the top of the cliff.

Aang and Katara just looked at each other for a moment before Katara remarked, "So who made him the boss?"

Aang laughed, and together they set about preparing their impromptu camp site.

* * *

**A/N-** Aaaaaaand end scene. Gah. This piece of crap chapter... ugh. Well, only one more slow episode and then we're off to do exciting, interesting things in the wider world. In the meanwhile, I would love you all forever if you left me a little feedback. Because even though this chapter is terrible and I know it, getting reviews still encourages me to write faster (and now that I am no longer fighting a malfunctioning laptop every step of the way, hopefully it won't take nearly so long for next chapter).


	7. Chapter 6: Far Across the Sea

**A/N-** _This chapter is short_ compared to most of the rest of them. It's one of the "interlude chapters" that will pop up from time to time in this fic, when there are a few scenes (or sometimes even just one) that don't really fit with either of the adjacent chapters. They're short, but (usually) important.

**Phooka**- It's funny you should mention spending some time on Zuko, because next chapter is dedicated exclusively to him. The Southern Air Temple is going to be polished off in two chapters, one dedicated to Zuko and one dedicated to the fledgling Gaang.

Also, since a couple of people now (to whom I replied privately) have asked, I figure more people than those who asked are probably curious about my take on winter vs. summer at the poles. Since Avatar canon was basically just like "LOL HOW DO I WEATHER" regarding seasons in different hemispheres, I've decided I can be arbitrary. Ergo, it is currently winter at the South Pole and summer at the North Pole.

* * *

~*Book 1: Wind & Water*~

Chapter 6: Far Across the Sea

"_We gotta get out of this place_  
_Girl, there's a better life for me and you._"  
-The Animals

* * *

Just as Aang had predicted, they were able to make it to the lands that had once been Air Nomad territory by the time night fell the next evening.

Katara, for her part, marveled at that. She recalled her father once telling her that with a good following wind, a fast Water Tribe ship could cross the cold South Sea in four days. The reality of soaring over that same gulf in less than twelve hours awed her.

It was a fairly pleasant voyage. The siblings were both in high spirits. Although both had been reluctant to leave their home, especially with the weight of responsibility sitting heavily on their shoulders, now that they were under way, the excitement of an adventure caught up to them. Even Sokka seemed caught up in the spirit of it. By unspoken agreement, they didn't bring up the hundred years Aang had missed. Both of them were all too aware that Aang's openly-expressed optimism about finding more airbenders when they reached the temple would be crushed soon enough, and neither of them was keen on the idea of dampening his bright enthusiasm any sooner than they had to.

Much to Katara's delight, Aang kept them entertained throughout the flight by telling stories of his travels. Leaning back against Appa's head and leaving the worthy bison to navigate his own course, he gave grand accounts of all the things he had seen in his fourteen years.

He was a storyteller the like of which Katara had never witnessed before. He had a profound inability to get to the point, often veering off on elaborate and long-winded tangents. It took a great deal of doing for him to actually finish one story before he'd started five more, when the Water Tribe teens were able to draw him back to his original point at all. But despite his meandering and nearly plotless narrative style, Katara was riveted. She found herself held captive by the prismatic tapestry of human life and adventure that he wove for them with his words. It became apparent only too quickly that the term "nomad" was not misapplied, and Aang had not been joking when he said he'd been nearly everywhere. The things he described, the tales he told of a world beyond the tiny ice-bounded village she had grown up in, stirred something wild and strange inside her that she hadn't known was slumbering there.

While the day wore on, it gradually dawned on her that this wasn't just a magical tale woven for her entertainment this time. The brilliant thought occurred to her that now she was the one striding out across the world. They were headed for the north pole. Who knew what sights they might see before they arrived there? Maybe someday soon it would be her crossing the dunes of the great Si Wong desert, or standing on the peaks of the legendary Fudong mountains, the highest in the world, or exploring the green and hidden valleys of the northern Earth Kingdom and meeting all the strange and unlikely people who were to be found there. Together with Sokka and Aang, she was off on an adventure, prepared to see the world before her. The realization brought an intense, almost painful, leap of joy to her heart.

* * *

As afternoon faded into early evening, Appa had begun to drift lower due to obvious exhaustion. By the time they made land just at nightfall, he was barely clearing the crests of the freezing waves below them, and Aang had begun to worry. Appa had even stopped grumbling, so focused on just keeping

The last rays of winter sunlight were sinking below the hills as they bunked down for the night. They were still on the low sandy beach at their first landfall. Appa carried them to shore, hauled himself a few yards past the high tide line, and flopped down in the pebbly beach. He let out a quiet rumble of satisfaction and promptly went to sleep. Aang airbended himself down from the bison's head and scurried around to peer worriedly into his friend's face.

"He's not usually so wiped out after a trip like this," he said, talking more to himself than to Sokka or Katara.

"Maybe it's the fact that he spent a century curled up inside an ice cube," Sokka suggested dryly. "But then again, _you_ never seem to run out of energy so maybe not."

Presently, they were interrupted by Katara, who had stood frozen on the beach right where her feet first touched the ground. "Sokka, look," she whispered.

"What?"

"I think... I think they're _trees_."

At her breathless declaration, Aang looked up from his inspection of Appa, and suddenly found himself as transfixed by her as she was by the trees. The sunset had stained her dark skin with a ruby glow, and she was awe-struck, face flushed with delight and her hood thrown back as she gazed up the shoreline at the evergreen forest that lined the beach. The childlike wonder in her eyes, the smile on her face, caused his stomach to do an unsettling little backflip.

Forcibly clearing his head with some effort on his part, Aang asked, "You guys have never seen trees before?"

Sokka shook his head. "No. Not much grows back home except lichen and the tough little shrubs out on the tundra."

It was bizarre to think that these two older teenagers, who seemed so experienced and confident, had never even seen a tree before. "Wow, you guys have really been missing out!" he exclaimed. Unable to resist, he threw a glance at Katara. "You wanna learn how to climb them?"

She returned his look and smiled even more broadly than before. "I'd love too, Aang!"

The two of them struck out up the gently sloping beach, feet crunching against the little stones that made up the ground beneath their feet. Katara practically bounced, her excitement was so palpable, and Aang was more than happy to keep up. Sokka stood beside Appa, staring after them, a slight pout on his face. "Fine, forget all about me," he muttered under his breath.

Abruptly, the airbender turned back and called out, "Aren't you coming, Sokka?"

The young warrior hesitated for a second, then shrugged. "Eh, I guess. My butt's sore from sitting in that saddle all day; I could use a walk." And with that, he took off after them.

* * *

**A/N-** Next chapter... Zuko. Oh joy. I'm thoroughly unenthusiastic about Zuko right now because I'm full of Azula feels and they're smushing any ability to care about her brother. Why, I know not. That's just how it is. So next chapter may take awhile (and not just because of the I-could-care-less-about-Zuko thing, but also because the new semester has started and I'm just really busy), but be patient, and I hope to have it up within two weeks if not sooner.


	8. Chapter 7: The View From Exile

**A/N-** Well, here it is. The Zuko Chapter. It was hard as hell to write, because I'm currently experiencing a bout of Not Giving A Single Fuck About Zuko. Which is sad, because Zuko is pretty awesome, actually. However, this chapter made me realize how many applicable epithets I've managed to collect for Zuko, and how he's still hard to write for regardless of what I call him. But Zhao made it bearable. Why is Zhao so fun to write?

No, seriously. I'm actually looking for an answer to that. _Why is Zhao so fun to write?_

Also, I used the word "honor" a lot in this chapter. Probably it isn't actually all that much, but it felt like a lot because I'm hyper-aware of that word when dealing with... well, _anything_ lately, because if someone says "honor" my ears perk up, but especially in relation to Zuko.

**Phooka-** You'll just have to wait and see about Gyatso. I'm hoping to handle the airbender genocide a little more thoroughly than the series was able to (for obvious reasons), so I hope what I have planned doesn't disappoint.

* * *

~*Book 1: Wind & Water*~

Chapter 7: The View From Exile

"_I always thought that I knew_  
_I'd always have the right to_  
_Be living in the kingdom of the good and true_  
_And so on, but now I think I was wrong_  
_And you were laughing along..._"  
-Keane

* * *

In the southern Earth Kingdom, about thirty miles east of a bizarre little village called Chin, there was a Fire Nation navy port. It had originally been an Earth Kingdom harbor, but during the reign of Fire Lord Azulon, it had been claimed by the Fire Nation and renamed Yosano. Part shipyard, part military base, it had become renowned both for the prowess of its ship-builders and the quality of the ore that was refined nearby. Presiding over the military station before the docks was a man called Zhao. Because of this, it wasn't Zuko's ideal docking point given his complicated history with the Fire Navy officer, but short of sailing far to the east almost to Chameleon Bay, he didn't have many other options. It was a choice between docking at Zhao's port of call to fix his damaged ship, or going far out of his way and losing his quarry in the process.

The sky was overcast as the ship slid into port, and the sulfurous smoke belching from the massive smelter for which the port was particularly famous contributed to the melancholy and forbidding atmosphere of the place. The ship was guided safely to dock through the efforts of chain-bound and grim-faced Earth Kingdom slaves who pulled them efficiently alongside the pier.

At Zuko's command, the crew gathered on the deck. They were small in number, but a capable and cohesive it had become apparent that his nephew would need a ship and a crew to complete his mission to seek out the Avatar, Iroh had hand-picked each and every man from the ranks of the Fire Navy. They were the sort of soldiers Fire Lord Ozai merely tolerated: skilled enough to be drafted, but not overly talented nor extensively trained. For the most part, they had been new recruits when Zuko had been banished. In short, Iroh had selected them because they were exactly the kind of soldiers his nephew had so passionately defended years before, defying his father and bringing disgrace upon himself in the first place.

Zuko was not aware of the qualifications his uncle had used, and the crew were not aware of the circumstances of their master's banishment, but Iroh felt there was a certain sort of poetry in it that might be valuable in the long run.

The disfigured prince stood with his back to his crew.

"We will be docked here for three days to make repairs to the ship. You are free to attend to your own pursuits during that time. However-" He turned to face them, surveying the men before him, most of them not more than a year or two older than himself. "-if any of you breathe one word of what happened at the South Pole to _anyone_ while in port, there will be consequences. No one is to know that the Avatar has been found. My mission must not fail, and our success depends on secrecy."

His small crew, which had regarded him impassively throughout his address, bowed as one with the traditional Fire Nation salute.

"You are free to go," Zuko informed them.

The men dispersed, heading none too slowly for the gangway to the dock. After several months at sea many of them were eager, not just for the chance to stretch their legs on solid ground, but for the comforts of the dockside taverns (and the ladies that frequented them). The only man who remained behind was Lieutenant Jee, the most highly ranked among them barring Zuko and Iroh themselves.

"Are there any further orders, Prince Zuko?" he asked respectfully. Jee was not overly fond of the young man, but he owed him his allegiance by virtue of his birthright, and like any good soldier, he put his personal feelings aside for the sake of his duty.

"Yes. I would like you to attend to the repairs. Do whatever it takes to make the ship sea-worthy in three days."

Jee's jaw tightened ever so slightly, already mourning the loss of his free time. "As you command, Prince Zuko."

* * *

Zuko made it through the first day with relative alacrity. He took his time on shore to enjoy a decent meal. He was a man of intense focus and dedication to his task, almost to the detriment of his health and other material concerns, but he was also royalty and very used to comfortable living (the past three years notwithstanding). The sorts of meals he had condescended to eat on board his ship, all tasteless hard bread and too-salty stews, had left his refined palate with a lot to be desired. Therefore, he made it a point to dine well whenever they made port somewhere.

But the creature comforts that came with landfall sustained him only the first twenty-four hours after their arrival (and that only because he spent at least seven of those hours asleep). After that, he began to grow antsy. Zuko did not deal well with waiting.

After the third time he abandoned his breakfast, lurched to his feet, and began a tight pace around the room, his uncle, who had been enjoying a solitary game of mahjong, decided it was time to speak up.

"Something bothering you, Nephew?"

Zuko let out a sharp groan of frustration. "We're wasting time!" he exploded. "The Avatar's out there somewhere, and every second we sit here is a second he gets further away. We've already been here too long as it is!"

"Patience, Nephew," Iroh counseled. "If you are meant to capture the Avatar, you will... and you will do it better with a ship in good condition."

"The ship doesn't matter if he disappears before we can even pull out of the harbor!"

"It doesn't matter if who disappears?"

At the sound of a new voice introduced to the room, the scarred teenager stiffened and turned. He knew very well who the rich baritone voice belonged to, and had his suspicions unhappily confirmed when he met the newcomer's eyes.

It was Zhao, the officer in command of the Yosano naval base. He was a tall, impressive man with a hairline that was starting to show signs of premature recession and stately sideburns to compensate for the loss. He wore his military uniform well and carried himself with a haughty air that perfectly advertised both his pride and his humorlessness. His beady amber eyes gleamed with pique, and Zuko felt cold sweat upon his brow at the thought of what Zhao might have overheard. There was no man in the Fire Nation more ambitious than Zhao and if he were to get wind of the discovery of the Avatar he would not stop until he personally had captured the boy, advancing his own career and dashing all of Zuko's desperate hopes in the process.

Seeing that his nephew was temporarily paralyzed in his panic and inability to think of a suitable response to the newcomer, Iroh intervened.

"Good to see you as always, Captain Zhao."

The tiniest shift allowed Zhao to offer a tiny inclination of his head to the older man. "The great General Iroh," he acknowledged. "Hero of our nation. Allow me to return the compliment. And..." A small, smug smile quirked at his lips. "It's Commander Zhao, now."

"And I am a _retired_ general," Iroh countered.

"Regardless, the Fire Lord's brother and son are always welcome on our shores. What brings you here, Prince Zuko?"

"Our ship is being repaired."

"Yes, I saw that. It was quite a lot of damage."

Although there was no explicit question in Zhao's words, his tone and the raised eyebrow with which he favored Zuko demanded explanation.

"Yes, a lot of damage. You wouldn't believe what happened!" But after that, he fumbled to a halt. Zuko was skilled in many areas, but coming up with convincing lies on the spot was not one of them. That had always been his sister's area of expertise. Floundering, he cast a helpless look at his uncle and commanded, "Uncle! Tell Commander Zhao what happened."

Iroh was equally caught off guard. "Yes, I will do that!" And that was the extent of his lie-crafting ability as well, apparently, because he hissed in an undertone to Zuko, "What, did we crash or something?"

Zhao's other eyebrow rose to join the first in a look of dubious surprise, obviously having overheard the older man's whisper.

"You will have to give me all the thrilling details... _later_," he said. "I only came by to pay my respects to you both, and to invite you to dine with me this evening."

Hesitant at the thought of passing dinner not only in Zhao's company but having to spin lies just to keep his delicate advantage in his quest, Zuko started, "Sorry, but we have to decline. I have pressing-"

"Zuko," Iroh interrupted sternly. "Lieutenant Jee can attend to the business about the ship. Show Commander Zhao your respect."

Thoroughly chastised, Zuko looked back to the tall commander and, in a tone that bespoke his furious reluctance, accepted the invitation.

"I look forward to hearing your full tale," Zhao said. "I must admit, though, I was surprised to see you in our part of the world. The latest intelligence I received indicated that you and your crew intended to patrol the waters around the Southern Water Tribe for at least the next two months before turning northwards again."

"There wasn't much point. If the Avatar were hiding in the Southern Water Tribe, we would have found him long ago." Zuko's spine was ramrod straight and his hands were twitching at his sides.

Zhao didn't bother to restrain a smirk. "I was under the impression, Prince Zuko, that you made a vow to scour every corner of the world for the Avatar, no matter how unlikely."

"Yes. Ah. Well. I-"

"What my nephew means is that some corners are so cold and sapped the morale of our crew so much that after our ship was damaged, there was little point in staying," Iroh interjected, saving his nephew from his own fumbling.

"Indeed." Zhao surveyed them impassively. "I look forward to your company this evening. Good day, Prince Zuko, General Iroh."

* * *

The banished prince was hiding something. It didn't take a tactical genius to figure that out (though Zhao considered himself to be one) because Zuko was a terrible liar. And if Zuko had found something important enough to send him scurrying back to the shores of the Earth Kingdom, it was a pretty safe bet that it was related to the Avatar.

Zhao, like anyone with their feet planted firmly on the ground, had known that the errand Fire Lord Ozai had given his son upon the occasion of his banishment was merely busywork. From a tactician's perspective, it was rather genius. Zuko clearly couldn't stay, but neither could he simply be ferried off and dumped in the Earth Kingdom somewhere. Banished sons needed something to occupy them or they would get bored, and bored royalty tended to stage coups just for something to do. Being sent away to seek the Avatar was an elegant solution. The idea gave him just enough hope of regaining his crown to keep him holding onto the illusion of his father's love and his pitiful delusions of honor, while still remaining a task so impossible that there was never any actual chance of him succeeding.

But now something had Zuko all in a nervous tizzy, making urgent demands on the metallurgists in the smelter and the craftsmen in the shipyards and telling blatant lies. From what little he'd seen of the royal brat in the last three years, the only thing that Zuko was truly passionate about anymore was the Avatar. It stood to reason, therefore, that whatever had gotten into the Fire Prince had something to do with the last airbender.

Now all he needed to do was find proof.

Zhao walked up the gangway onto the prince's ship, currently beset by craftsmen in the process of repairing the damage to the exterior hull. His eyes darted around until he spotted the man he was looking for, a handsome officer in his early thirties with a firm jaw and premature lines about his eyes. Zhao allowed his lips to twitch in the smallest of grins before setting his face into his customary stern expression and approaching. A few of the officers under his command had been set to interrogating Zuko's crew, but Lieutenant Jee had been serving longer than most of them and had been a tough nut to crack even before his years of service with the Fire Navy.

"Commander Zhao." The lieutenant addressed him and made a small obeisance.

"Lieutenant Jee," Zhao rejoined good-naturedly. "It's been some time."

"Yes, it has. We haven't made port in friendly territory for some time."

Zhao nodded, turning to survey the busy deck of the ship. "And yet you're here now."

A beat of silence passed.

"That is rather... _extensive_ damage."

"It is indeed."

He used another moment of silence to his advantage before shooting a glance at Jee. "It's funny, actually," he said in a tone that suggested the complete opposite, "When I met with Prince Zuko, he failed to mention how the damage occurred."

Jee did not speak, but Zhao could see there was a little hint of panic in his eyes, and pressed his advantage.

"I'm sure the story behind it is fascinating. The prince has promised to give me full details tonight, but I confess I'm rather anxious to hear the tale sooner. You know," he added, in an off-hand sort of way, "I had half thought when I saw the condition of your vessel, that maybe you had done the impossible and found the Avatar after all. But I'm sure, if that were the case, you would tell me."

The silence then was pressing. Zhao could see the lieutenant mulling something over, and was suddenly very, very sure that his suspicions were correct and despite all odds, the half-wit prince actually had stumbled across the missing Avatar after all. And he, Zhao, was only seconds away from receiving confirmation and being handed the chance to turn his fortunes and advance his rank beyond his wildest dreams. The duty-bound officer in front of him, visibly wavering, would confess everything and then there would be nothing to stop Zhao from becoming a commodore, an admiral, maybe even Fire Lord if he played his cards right. All it would take would be the word of the man before him...

"Certainly I would," Jee said at last, "if that were the case. But it was nothing so exciting, I'm afraid. We ran afoul of an iceberg in the night. You know how treacherous those southern waters can be at this time of year."

Zhao only barely repressed the urge to burn the man's infuriatingly sincere face right off. He would have deserved it, too, if he was so hell-bent on being loyal to his disfigured master.

"Yes, I do know," he agreed through gritted teeth.

He clenched his fists and hoped one of his officers had better luck with some other hapless member of Zuko's crew.

* * *

"You've been interrogating my crew."

If Zhao had been in a foul mood before that pronouncement from the scarred teenager glaring him down, the fact that he blurted that out the instant he walked into Zhao's private dining room would certainly have put him in one. As it was, he settled for fixing Zuko with an irritated stare. He was pretty sure that was all he could manage without attacking the prince in his current state of discontent, and that would be most unwise, considering the presence of General Iroh standing silently behind his nephew. Zhao was a prideful man, but even he was not so foolish as to underestimate the Dragon of the West.

"Didn't you hear what I said? Answer me!"

"I don't see the point, actually," Zhao replied coolly.

Zuko growled. "You and your officers interrogated my men, asking questions about our accident. My first lieutenant was good enough to tell me all about your little chat with him this morning."

"I should have known your lily-livered officer would squeal the second I left," he muttered.

"Lieutenant Jee is an honorable man!" Zuko protested fiercely. "You would be wise not to insult him. What is your game, Zhao? What do you want to know?"

Zhao got to his feet and used the advantage of his great height to physically intimidate the younger man. "What do I want? I want to know what you found in the Southern Water Tribe that has made you so nervous."

"Nothing that would be of interest to you." It was to his credit that Zuko did not shrink in the face of the military man's dominating stature or obviously combative attitude, but it only served to annoy Zhao further. The commander was spoiling for a fight.

"Are you so sure of that, Prince Zuko?"

"Very!"

"I don't think so. Do you want to know what I _do_ think?"

"No."

"I think you actually did it," Zhao said with a sneering curl to his lip. "I think you actually found the Avatar down there. I think you found him and managed to lose him and now you're trying to cover it up so that no one else gets in your way while you chase him."

"You're- you're delusional!"

Condescension clear in his expression, he spat out, "I knew you were a coward, Zuko, but I never thought you'd betray your own nation that way." Springboarding of the prince's roar of fury, he tacked on, "Or maybe it's not betrayal. Maybe it is cowardice, after all."

Zuko made a sharp, sudden movement, as if he were going to attack Zhao right then and there... but his uncle's meaty hand falling on his shoulder and restraining him stopped him. The prince let out a low staccato growl. "Agni kai," he spat, a short, irrefutable challenge.

"Prince Zuko, no!" Iroh hissed.

"At dawn."

Zhao paused only a moment to weigh his options. Dueling the prince in an agni kai would be satisfaction in and of itself. _Beating_ the prince in an agni kai- an inevitable outcome, given Zuko's lack of skill- would be even more so. "I accept your challenge, _Prince Zuko_," he said, in a tone dripping with mockery. "Meet me on the training grounds tomorrow morning."

Zuko nodded sharply, and without a word further, he turned on his heel and stalked out of the room. General Iroh gave him an apologetic bow, and followed his nephew into the night.

* * *

The next morning dawned cold and dim. The sky was still overcast and the air smelled like snow. The flat earthen surface of the training ground was coated in the thinnest imaginable layer of frost.

Zuko had spent the better part of the night in meditation, mentally preparing for the fire duel. The young man who stood shirtless, facing his opponent across the arena had an altogether different mien from the furious boy who had initiated the challenge upon the insult to his honor. Although Zuko's characteristic turbulence of spirit had not faded, it was now accompanied by a clear mind and collectedness that suited him well.

Despite his readiness, his uncle was fretting. "Please, Prince Zuko, do not do this. Have you forgotten what happened the last time you dueled a master?"

"I will never forget," Zuko replied, his tone icy. Every mirror was a reminder.

Across the training grounds, Zhao faced him. "Are you sure you won't reconsider?" he called mockingly. "As I recall, the last time you fought an agni kai, your cowardice overwhelmed whatever meager talent you have. It would be a shame to further damage the crown prince... even if he is in exile."

Zuko closed his eyes, drawing on every ounce of self-control he had, and let the taunt go. Foul talk before a duel was in bad taste, and Zuko would not further tarnish his honor by descending to Zhao's level.

"Let's do this," he responded curtly.

Zuko fired the first shot, a fierce but poorly aimed blast of fire that sailed harmlessly through the air on Zhao's left. The older man simply let Zuko's erratic blasts pass him by, until finally one came close to target. With practiced ease, Zhao whipped his forearms through the air, deflecting and dissipating Zuko's attack with ease.

And then he was on the offensive. He charged, driving them into close combat, a flurry of arms and legs and punches carrying fierce heat before them. Zuko's youthful agility gave him an advantage, but Zhao had the benefit of many more years of training and raw firepower. As Uncle Iroh stood on the sidelines, anxiously calling advice to his nephew, the duel raged back and forth between them. For some time, it was hard to tell who would be the victor. He pressed Zuko back and back and back until the teenager fell to the ground when his attempt to block his opponent's fiery kick went awry. In an instant, Zhao had him at his mercy, and he drew back his fist to deliver what very easily might have been a killing blow, when something changed.

With an acrobatic twist, Zuko swept his opponent's feet from under him, dropping Zhao to the ground and flipping himself upright with the momentum. A prideful smirk graced his features as he looked down at his opponent. Now _he_ had the advantage and for all Zhao's skill, he was a man in his forties and could not expect to successfully emulate Zuko's maneuver.

Zhao scrambled backwards as Zuko advanced on him, his fists coming up in preparation to deal a blow of his own. It was only a moment before Zhao recognized the futility of his efforts.

"Do it," he growled, loathing clear in his eyes.

A second's pause ticked by as Zuko weighed his options, pride and honor battling in his mind, and then he made his choice. With a quick flick of his wrist, he delivered the final fire blast of the agni kai...

...right into the ground beside Zhao's head.

If anything, the hatred on Zhao's face increased tenfold. "It seems I was right," he spat. "Our Fire Lord did raise a coward."

"That was a warning," Zuko said. "If you ever give such an insult to me again, I will not be so generous."

He walked away, but as he was making his triumphant exit he heard a roar of rage and, assuming his opponent had chosen to attack while his back was turned, whirled swiftly to face Zhao once more... only to find that his uncle had stepped between them, halting Zhao's dishonorable attack. His large hand, more commonly used of late to arrange the pieces on the pai sho board or select the best tea leaves for the finest brew, had returned to battle with ease, clenched around the foot the commander would have used to launch a stream of fire at Zuko.

"So this is how the great Commander Zhao acts in defeat," Iroh commented sadly, tossing the unbalanced officer away as if he weighed no more than a rag doll. "Disgraceful. Even in exile, my nephew has more honor than you."

Zuko's head ticked up at the statement, and he gazed at his uncle in something akin to awe.

Part of him wondered if his uncle had really meant it. The rest of him was afraid to ask.


	9. Chapter 8: Ashes

**A/N-** Ugh. Writing Zuko killed my soul and increased the severity of my psychological issues. I wish I was kidding, or even just exaggerating. I really didn't want to write this chapter either, to be honest. This chapter is HEAVY, and it's also the last of what I like to term "the dull episodes." Yes, I like the first three episodes, but as far as I'm concerned, Suki marked the true advent of Avatar's awesomeness.

Anyway, I feel like this is the Getting To Know Aang chapter. It's also The Chapter Where Aang Was So Precious It Killed Me Because I Had To Rip Out His Heart. And I strongly recommend everybody keep in mind that Bryke intended for Momo to be the reincarnated spirit of Gyatso. Just FYI.

**Phooka-** Not hardly. You just happen to have exceptionally good timing. I'm happy you like my take on Zuko, too. I always felt like Zuko was this bizarre combination of uncontrollable temper and intense self-discipline, and that was what I most hoped to convey with last chapter.

* * *

~*Book 1: Wind & Water*~

Chapter 8: Ashes

"_If I could go back once again,_  
_I would change everything._  
_If I could go back once again_  
_I'd do it all so much better,_  
_But time won't let me go..._"  
-The Bravery

* * *

They discovered that Aang was a morning person.

Katara was not one, and Sokka even less so, but Aang was up with the sun and already had Appa's saddle on, most of their bags packed away, and was all but bouncing with excitement to get going by the time Katara had pulled on her parka.

"Yeesh, who spring-loaded _you?_" Sokka griped as Aang hauled him bodily to his feet while Sokka's feet were still half-tangled in his sleeping bag.

"Come on, Sokka!" Aang exclaimed, his cheery mood undamped by the older boy's grumbling. "It's still a long flight to the temple, and we need to get there by noon!"

"Why?" Katara asked.

He beamed at her. "For an hour after noon this time of year, the sun shines at just the right angle to light up this huge piece of cut crystal and make rainbows. You guys will love it!"

And so, with much poking and prodding and boundless enthusiasm, Aang managed to get both of his new friends up and ready to go with remarkable speed. By the time the sun cleared the horizon, they were in the saddle and ready to go. With an energetic flick of the reins and a cry of "yip-yip!" from Aang, they were off.

For the first two hours or so, they soared over the rolling grassy hills of the lowlands. Katara and Sokka couldn't help but gape at the scenery. Even in the winter, there was still more green spread out below them than either of them had ever seen in their life. Although the landscape was relatively flat, it was still a thrilling change from the flat tundra landscape the two were accustomed to... but that was nothing compared to the mountains that loomed ever larger on the horizon. The Patola Mountains, Aang informed them gleefully. Or, in other words, his home.

Katara felt, looking across the swiftly-vanishing plains to the high blue range beyond them, that she could understand the puzzle of Aang a little better upon seeing the land he called home. This strange, silly, occasionally wise boy seemed to fit the wild landscape she was observing. She could picture him belonging here.

As they crossed the last stretch of grassland between the ocean and the mountains proper, Sokka called out, "Look! People!"

Eagerly, Katara leaned over the edge of the saddle to see where he was pointing. There were indeed people below them, a small collection of huts that made even Sokka and Katara's village look like a proper city. As they passed overhead, one of the miniscule figures spotted them, and immediately signaled to some others, all of whom dropped what they were doing and stared up at the sky. Katara waved eagerly at the people on the ground, taking unexpected delight in the barely-discernable expressions of shock on their face. She supposed it must really have been a long time since anyone in the world had seen a flying bison such as Appa.

Aang glanced down as well for just a brief moment, then turned his eyes back to the skies ahead.

"Who are they?" she asked him.

"Probably Earth Kingdom nationals," he said. "Even though the Patola Range is technically Air Nomad territory, the foothills are perfect for grazing zebra-goats; a lot of the nomadic families made their livelihood that way, but Earth Kingdom citizens would relocate here sometimes, and we were more than happy to share the land."

For the briefest moment a shadow crossed his face, and Katara wondered if he was wondering if there was any chance that some of the people might be other airbenders. Aang had been stunningly optimistic about his situation, but Katara couldn't help but wonder if keeping a positive outlook wasn't just his way of coping. She was pretty sure he was in denial.

* * *

They arrived at the temple before noon, just as Aang had hoped.

It was so high in the mountains that the Water Tribe siblings, used to living more or less at sea level, had a difficult time catching their breath. A little creative airbending on Aang's part eased their discomfort, but Sokka was a little put up that Aang was so at home with the altitude while he himself couldn't acclimate. All resentment was forgotten, though, when they broke through the final veil of clouds and first caught sight of the temple.

Katara had never seen anything like it. Little buildings clung in dizzyingly precarious clusters to the steep slopes of the mountain and the temple proper, a graceful structure of five white marble minarets capped with blue tile roofs, reached up for the sky like an exquisite extension of the mountain itself. The place seemed ephemeral and impermanent, yet just by looking at it one could see how ancient the temple was. There was history here.

And she realized quite suddenly that some of that history belonged to Aang. This was where he had lived, over a century ago. The strangeness of it all hit her suddenly, and she had to pinch herself surreptitiously to be sure this was real. No, she really was here, approaching one of the legendary Air Temples on the back of a flying bison in the company of her brother and the last airbender who just so happened to be the Avatar.

She snuck a glance at Aang. His grey eyes, so bright on an ordinary day, were gleaming almost silver through a combination of the sunlight slanting down to them and the pure excitement spread across his face. The sight of him broke her heart a little. To Aang, they weren't going to visit a lost piece of history, some fascinating place of legend. To Aang, they were going _home_.

Katara wanted so badly to believe, for his sake, that they really would find airbenders still hiding out in the temples. But life had not been kind to the young waterbender, and she knew only too well that thinking the Fire Nation might have spared any of the airbenders was nothing but a happy delusion. She hated the thought of witnessing the moment when Aang would have that delusion shattered. She wanted to hide from him, so that she wouldn't have to see the kind of grief on his face that she'd seen on her own eight years earlier. Katara knew, though, that when it finally happened, he would need someone; instead of hiding herself away in Appa's saddle the way she was tempted to, she hopped down just after Aang.

Besides, she really was curious to see the temple.

"Come on, guys!" Aang cried happily. "It's right this way!"

Katara took off after him, with Sokka right behind, as the young airbender led them up the winding stone pathway. The two of them quickly discerned that everything about the temple was winding or circular, full of vaulted archways and round windows on the buildings and sinuous patterns in the decorative stonework. It was beautiful...

And it was deserted.

Aang stopped dead in the middle of the first courtyard they came to. "There's no one here," he said plaintively. "Last time I was here, this place was full of lemurs and monks and flying bison. Now it's just... empty."

Katara laid a comforting hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry," she said. "I know how much you were hoping you might find some other airbenders here."

"Yeah, I guess," he said, blankly staring at the weeds growing up between the cracks in the paving stones. Suddenly, he brightened. "Maybe they're just hiding out in the mountains!" And just like that, he was off again, heading for the huge doors across the courtyard.

She glanced over her shoulder to catch her brother's gaze, communicating her concern with her eyes. Sokka just shrugged helplessly.

The two of them rushed to catch up with the airbender, hurrying through the arched doors to a second inner courtyard. Once inside, they discovered Aang standing frozen in front of a stone carving of a bearded monk perched on a low pedestal. The statue was seated in the lotus position, hands resting palm up on his knees, and though the expression on his grey marble features was serious, the sculptor had clearly been a master craftsman because Katara could catch just a glimpse of warmth and wry humor in the eyes. The personality of the commemorated old man showed clearly in the statue.

"Who is that?" Sokka asked.

Aang reached out and traced the carving of the beaded necklace the monk wore, inscribed with the symbol of the Air Nation. "This is Monk Gyatso," he said fondly. "He was the greatest airbender in the world, and my teacher."

"Wow, so you knew this guy?"

Aang nodded. "Besides Appa, he was my best friend."

His tone of voice was warm with remembrance and respect, but Katara detected the wistfulness in his face. Feeling deeply protective of her new friend, she laid a hand on his shoulder, lending him what support she could.

"You must miss him."

"Yeah," he murmured.

Again she shot a look at Sokka, asking him to do something.

Sokka, to his credit, had a solution almost at once. "So, Aang, you said something about a rainbow crystal."

Aang perked up immediately. "Oh! Yeah! In the upper garden! We still have twenty minutes to get there before it gets too late to see the rainbow effect. Come on!"

* * *

His excitement was all for naught, however.

When they arrived at the temple garden, itself overgrown with withered vines and oversized rhubarb long since gone to seed, they discovered to much dismay that the huge crystal had been shattered.

From the fragments, and from the size of the stone frame it had been mounted in, it was obvious that the crystal had been huge, nearly the size of a grown man. Traders from the Earth Kingdom had brought stories of such rare and legendary treasures to be found in the warmer parts of the world but seeing the evidence that such a thing had actually existed right here, two days' flight from where she had lived her whole life, was surreal. Katara wondered if it had been a gift from the earthbenders ages ago, in repayment for some favor from the Air Nomads, or if the monks had gone through the painstaking process of excavating and carving the stone themselves.

Either way, it was clear that the crystal had once been a beautiful piece of yellow quartz, set in a recessed corner that did not receive as much light as the rest of the yard. From the position of the setting, Katara could see that Aang had been right: before the stone had been broken, for a short time each day, the crystal would catch the sunlight from just the right angle to send rackets of rainbows across the garden. As it was now, only the frame remained intact. The stone itself lay in ten thousand glistening pieces at their feet.

Aang reached out a hand to touch the frame.

"I don't understand. This stone was thousands of years old. How could it have broken?"

This time, it was Sokka who caught Katara's eye, giving her a pained grimace. Neither sibling had the heart to say out loud what they both had known all along, and neither of them knew what else to say.

Aang studied the frost of crystal shards on the ground for what felt like a long time before he said quietly, "When they told me I was the Avatar, the monks said that when I came of age, I'd be allowed to enter the temple sanctuary. They said that I'd meet someone there who would be able to help me understand how to be the Avatar." He pulled in a deep lungful of air, steadying himself, and turned to face them. "I'm not sixteen yet, but I think now is the right time for me to find out who's waiting for me in there."

"That sounds like a good plan, Aang," Katara agreed. "Do you want us to come along, or are we not allowed to be in the sanctuary with you?"

He pondered that momentarily, his lower lip protruding in thought. "Customarily, only the Avatar and dedicates of the temple ever go in the sanctuary, but there isn't any actual rule that says other people can't, as far as I know. Besides, no one else is here. And..." He shuffled his feet shyly. "And I guess I'd kind of like you guys to be with me."

"You're nervous," Katara guessed.

He blushed, embarrassed. "A little."

"Well then, we'll go with you."

"Thanks, Katara." He gave her a grateful smile, then turned aside. "We might as well head down there now."

"Okay."

Aang headed for the gate at the end of the garden, but Sokka hung back and grabbed Katara's elbow to keep her from following. Once Aang disappeared from sight, he turned to her and said, "Katara, look at those crystal shards."

"What about them?"

He stooped and picked up a fist-sized piece of the polished stone and handed it to her. Katara turned it over in her palms and understood immediately what he meant. Although many of the new edges were the clean fractures made from shattering, one face of the crystal which should have been smooth and flat appeared to have warped. It took her a moment to understand what it meant, but when she understood, she gasped.

"It broke because it was super-heated!"

"Exactly."

"Firebenders?" she asked.

"Probably."

Katara stared at the lump of quartz in her hand. She had suspected that firebenders must have come here when they killed all the Air Nomads. The empty temple had proved it. But it was one thing to know that objectively and another thing entirely to see evidence of this with her own eyes. She sighed at the thought. She was just grateful they hadn't come across any corpses. Then again, they hadn't seen much of the interior of the temple yet. A skeleton wouldn't survive left out in the elements for so long, surely. She hoped that none had weathered the century inside the temple, either, for Aang's sake and her own peace of mind.

"I hate this," she said quietly. "I hate walking around here, knowing the reason it's empty is because they're all gone, and watching him so..."

"In denial?"

"I was going to say 'optimistic,' but... yeah."

"We should tell him."

Katara shook her head. "I can't. I know he deserves to know, but I can't do it."

"You can't protect him forever."

"I can try."

At that moment, Aang poked his head back in the doorway, his trademark crooked grin plastered over his features. "Hey, guys! Why are you still standing there?"

"Sorry. We just got a little side-tracked," Katara replied, slipping the lump of golden stone into her pocket so he wouldn't see it. The last thing she needed was to arouse his curiosity.

"Well, come on, then! We've got a sanctuary to see!"

"Alright, we're coming." With a quelling look at Sokka, she went to join Aang.

The young warrior sighed, and followed his sister.

* * *

It took them a some time to reach the Air Temple sanctuary because in order to reach the only door, they had to travel a long path around to the southern side of the mountain and down a long sloping hallway that led them into the mountain itself. Aang could have made the walk much faster, but Sokka and Katara couldn't run like airbenders. The sanctuary was actually comprised of the entire interior of the temple's central spire, but the entrance was underground. Aang had never understood why _anything_ in the Air Temple would be underground, but he'd been told there was a good reason, and he trusted that the elder monks knew better about this than he would.

When they came at last to the door, Aang was a little ball of nerves. Even in these circumstances, it felt so wrong to be opening the sanctuary doors. Even though he'd earned his master's tattoos two years (or rather, one hundred and two years) earlier, even though he was the only airbender in the temple, even though he was the Avatar and had a right to know the secrets hidden behind the huge oaken doors, his years as a temple novice were deeply ingrained in him and it still felt forbidden. Then again, this whole day had been so, so wrong from the start. He'd been so sure when they'd started out this morning that he'd be able to prove Katara and Sokka wrong, and show them that the other airbenders had just been hiding this whole time, but instead they'd come to an empty temple. The people were gone, the bison were gone, and he hadn't even seen a single ring-tailed bat-lemur yet. The sun-crystal was broken and the temple was in disrepair. It really couldn't get worse at this point, so he might as well make the most of it. Entering the temple now would just be the wrongness cap on top of a wrong day.

"How do you get in?" Sokka asked, studying the doors. "Is there a key?"

"The key is airbending. Only a master airbender can open these doors."

At that, Katara's eyes widened. "Wait, if you can open them... you're a _master?_" she asked in awe.

Aang wasn't sure how to feel about the fact that they hadn't known this, that his tattoos were no longer a signal to everyone across the world that he was a master. It was just one more reminder of how much had changed since he'd last walked these halls. It felt like only a few days ago to him, but his new friends' ignorance to the meaning of his tattoos drove home to him just how long it had really been in a way that the current state of the temple hadn't managed to do.

"Yes," he told her, feeling an odd combination of sadness, nostalgia, and eager pride. "That's what my tattoos mean."

Sokka's eyebrows drew together in confusion. "Really? But... you're fourteen!"

He grinned at his consternation. "The monks told me I was the youngest airbender to achieve master status in recorded history," he told them. As he said it, he shot a look at Katara, wondering if she'd be impressed. He was pleased to see that, judging by her expression, she very much was.

"How old were you?" she asked.

"Twelve."

Scratch that. She didn't look impressed. She looked positively awed. Aang's smile grew wider. Maybe this day was turning around after all.

"Wow," she said. "I could barely make waves when I was twelve, let alone being a master!"

"Well, that's why we're headed to the North Pole, right? To find you a teacher," Aang pointed out. "I bet you anything you'll be a master one day, Katara."

"Yeah yeah yeah, you're both awesome, we got it." Sokka interjected drolly, earning himself a glare from his sister. "If you guys are done complimenting each other can we go in the sanctuary now?"

"Sure thing, Sokka!"

With a whirl and a well-practiced flick of his wrists, Aang directed two powerful jets of air into the twin horn-pipes set into the sanctuary doors. Just as he remembered, as the three lock-valves on the pipes turned into place a unique tone was sounded from each. Together, the three tones made up a major chord that a group of enlightened monks far back into antiquity had determined was the most spiritually harmonious chord. The sound resonated for several seconds before he ceased the flow of his air jets and allowed the chord to fade into echoes and then silence as the doors creaked open.

The sanctuary was dark as he ventured inside, with Katara and Sokka close on his heels. As their eyes adjusted, though, it quickly became apparent that the hall was filled with statues. _Thousands_ of statues, arranged in a spiral, circling around the floor and outward to the walls before rising on a tiered spiral around the interior wall of the sanctuary.

"Wow," Aang whispered.

The three of them approached the nearest statue, a slender Air Nomad woman. To her right was a tall firebender with a solemn expression and to her left was a broad shouldered man in Water Tribe furs. Aang walked past them to the statue of an enormously tall woman in an elaborate costume bearing a spread fan in each hand. He looked back in the direction he had come and started to notice the pattern.

It was Katara who worked it out first. "It's the Avatar cycle!" she exclaimed. "These statues... they must be your past lives, Aang."

"Past lives, really?" Sokka asked skeptically.

"It's true, Sokka," Katara returned. "The Avatar spirit is reincarnated into each new element in the cycle when the previous Avatar dies. All these people have got to be all the past Avatars. Right Aang?"

Aang, for his part, had come to the last statue in the pattern, a sere and noble-looking firebender. He was gazing up into the statue's face, oddly entranced, and Katara's words only barely registered with him. "Yeah... something like that," he murmured. "Don't really... know the details..."

There was something about them all that seemed familiar, but this particular statue, this firebender... something about his elderly face stirred something very _immediate_ within him, some sense of recognition and a wakening awareness of some self beyond what he had previously known. A low, clear, ringing hum took up behind his ears, and he was sure there was a faint glow about the statues eyes...

"Aang? Aang!"

A pair of hands on his shoulders jolted him back to the present.

"Huh? Oh. Yeah. Sorry," he said, both grateful and mildly annoyed with Katara for snapping him out of it.

"Who do you suppose he was?" she wondered, studying the same statue he'd been so entranced by.

Aang cast a nervous glance up at the stone face, wondering if he was about to be absorbed again, but no such thing happened.

"That's Avatar Roku."

"How do you know?" Sokka asked. "There aren't any names."

Aang shrugged. "I'm not sure how I know. I just do."

"Anybody ever told you you're weird?"

Ignoring him, Aang turned back to the entrance of the sanctuary, looking into the light streaming in from the distant end of the hall beyond the doors. "I wonder what was in here that the monks wanted to show me?" he pondered aloud. "It seems like it's just the statues."

"It has been a hundred years," Katara reminded him gently.

"Yeah, I guess. I can't help but feel like there's something important here, though..."

"Can we get out of here?" Sokka asked. "It's creepy."

"It's not creepy!" Katara protested.

"It's _completely_ creepy. All the big creepy statues with their big creepy eyes in the big creepy tower that nobody's been in for a hundred creepy-"

"_We get it, Sokka._"

"I'm just saying! Why stick around in the Sanctuary of Creepiness when we could go play that air-ball game Aang was talking about earlier."

Katara turned to look at Aang, and he quickly worked to straighten out the grin that had been forming on his face as he watched the siblings bicker. "What do you think, Aang? Do you want to stay here awhile?"

He shrugged. "It doesn't look like there's anything here but the statues. Still, I keep thinking there must be a reason the monks expected me to come in here eventually. But if Sokka wants to go, we can go."

"Tell you what, how about I stay here for a little while? I'll look around and see if there's anything we missed. You can take Chief Creepy over there and whoop his butt at air-ball."

"Are you sure you want to stay in here alone?"

She nodded eagerly. "Yeah. I've never seen anything like this. I wouldn't mind getting a chance to take a closer look."

Aang found himself pleased with her answer and he wasn't totally sure why. "Alright then. Works for me!" he exclaimed eagerly. "Come on, Sokka!"

The two of them left the sanctuary and Aang guided the older boy down to the air-ball courts.

Halfway there, though, Sokka was abruptly assaulted in an unexpected aerial attack by a lemur. "Ack! Ack! Get it off!" he cried, as the furry little creature did its best to scurry inside his tunic. Sokka grabbed at it and tried to push it away, but it was too quick and all he succeeded in doing was making himself look very silly as he waved his arms around ineffectually.

"Sokka, you'll never get rid of him like that!" Aang choked out, trying very hard not to laugh at the sight of his friend's disgruntled expression. "Here, let me-"

He intervened in the man/lemur duel, reaching out to stroke the lemur's large ears at the first instant it paused. Abruptly, the little lemur stilled completely. His large green eyes closed in bliss and a little purring noise emanated from his throat.

"There you go, buddy," Aang said, lifting the creature from Sokka's shoulder and transferring him to his own. "You're the first lemur we've seen all day, so I bet you're pretty lonely. All you want is a little attention, huh? No need to make a big fuss just for that, now was there!"

The lemur chirped and rubbed his head affectionately along Aang's jaw, provoking a laugh from the young airbender.

"See?" he said, looking up at Sokka. "You'll tame more lemurs with honey than with vinegar!"

"You are a _weird_ kid," Sokka repeated, shaking his head.

Aang laughed good-naturedly. He'd known Sokka long enough to hear the reluctant affection in the older boy's voice despite his words. "Come on, Sokka. Let's play some air-ball."

Plucking the lemur off his shoulder, he set him back on the paving stones to continue their walk. To his surprise, though, the lemur followed them.

"Are you coming too?" he asked.

The lemur sat up on his hind legs and trilled brightly, giving the appearance of an affirmative answer.

"Well, alright then. Come on, little lemur."

Despite their new friend's constant attempts to trip them up by attacking their ankles at random moments, they reached the air-ball courts in good time. It was located on a flat terrace hollowed out from the mountain-side, one of several such plateaus that had been created to make room for expansion beyond the temple proper. Aang was pleased to see that this, at least, looked just as it ought to. The multitude of wooden posts of varying heights that stood arrayed across the field were a little more weather-worn than they had been when he'd left, but the familiar court was still standing and in good condition. Aang surveyed the grounds, but he was unable to spy the ball.

"So how do you play?" Sokka asked.

"The rules are pretty simple. You just get the ball through the other person's goal hoop without letting it touch the ground. You get extra points for every post your shot knocks into on the way across the field."

"Seems straightforward enough."

Aang nodded. "I'm not sure how easy it will be for you. You don't _have_ to be an airbender to play, but it might be pretty hard without it."

"I wouldn't bet on that," Sokka said proudly. "I'll have you know, I'm very athletic!" He made a fist with his right arm, showing off his developing muscles that could be discerned even through his parka.

"I believe you! Now I just need to find the ball..." He looked around again, but couldn't spy it anywhere. "Well, we always kept a few extras in the bison's stable, just over there. Wait right here and I'll go grab one."

The bison stables were a massive complex by necessity, located on the terrace just south and a little bit below the air-ball courts. Aang leapt down the ledge as only an airbender can, approaching them. The stables were arranged in a square formation, each connecting to the two adjacent at each end, with a large courtyard in the middle of them serving as a landing space. Each stall was easily three hundred feet square, and had two doors: one massive one which opened on the central courtyard for the bison, and a smaller one inside the stables for their human companions.

Aang entered the stable. There were indeed two spare balls hung on the racks just inside the door. Aang had meant to just grab one and get out of there, but he got distracted by the smell. It didn't smell right. It should have smelled like warm animal and hay and dust, but it didn't. More importantly though, something he spied out of the corner of his eye caught his attention and froze him where he stood.

It was a helmet.

Nothing all that remarkable, really. The burgundy and black stained metal, the large spikes made to call to mind a dragon's horns... anyone who had ever paid a visit to a Fire Nation city of even moderate size had seen helmets like that on the heads of the guardsmen. Just a Fire Nation helmet.

_Almost a century ago, the Fire Nation attacked the other nations without any warning._

He ventured further into the stables, taking note of the scorch marks he could see faintly on the walls as his eyes adjusted to the dimness. An unpleasant feeling was building in his stomach, a sick sort of trepidation. He felt that he should turn back, just leave here if he didn't want to know... but he couldn't make himself run. Something was compelling him forward.

And here, a soot-stained gauntlet that certainly didn't belong to any airbender lying on the floor.

_The Air Nomads all vanished a hundred years ago, and no one has seen an airbender since._

The temple was empty. _Why_ was the temple empty?

He had been sure that his people were just in hiding. Airbenders were peaceable people, not inclined to involve themselves in violence and bloodshed of any kind, by nature as well as philosophy. He had convinced himself that surely they were just waiting out the war in seclusion, but that didn't make sense. Even if the airbenders were hiding, they would never abandon the temple. The four Air Temples were sacred ground, and there was not a force on earth that could have driven his people to abandon them permanently, short of...

_There._ More scorch marks on the walls, on the floor. He was approaching a corner that would lead him to another block of stalls, and the evidence of a fire-fight was more prominent.

And besides, his people were nonviolent, but they weren't cowards. The war with the Fire Nation had lasted a century already. If there were still airbenders, they wouldn't have hidden. They would have come forth and tried to encourage reason and foster peace. They would have tried to negotiate a ceasefire with the Fire Nation. They would have tried to shelter the innocent and find a solution that would bring about peace. But they hadn't, which meant...

He reached the corner, and his heart was pounding so hard that he could feel each pulse in his fingertips. He felt light-headed, and not in a good way, and even though every instinct he had was screaming at him to turn back, he couldn't make himself do it. Distantly, he heard Sokka's voice calling him, but he couldn't turn around even to respond.

Aang walked around the corner.

If he'd been able to breathe, he would have screamed. Lying in the middle of the corridor, amid a twisted wreck of scorched wood and metal that had once been the back wall of a stall, was the skeleton of a bison. The bones were clean and scorched black, and here and there a few remaining tufts of white hair still remained. The sightless eye sockets in the massive skull stared at him accusingly.

Feeling as though he was about to be sick, Aang stumbled backwards with a ragged gasp, trying desperately to get some air into his lungs to stop his spinning head. He turned away, unable to bear the sight of the wretched corpse. He tripped back to the corner, aiming blindly for the door, and all but fell through the curtain dividing the interior of the stable from the central yard.

If Aang had been having a hard time breathing before, what he found outside nearly stopped him from trying.

* * *

Katara had circled the ground floor of the sanctuary, studying the face of each Avatar, and wondering if Aang would have been able to tell her their names. She hadn't been able to find anything important within the sanctuary except the statues themselves, so she instead dedicated her attention to examining each one closely.

Many of the faces were old men and women who had clearly lived a healthy long lifespan, but some of the carvings depicted very young faces. In particular, Katara noted a firebender Avatar just a few turns of the cycle back from the old man called Roku, a strikingly beautiful girl who didn't look like she could possibly be older than twenty. The very implications saddened Katara, despite the girl being a firebender. She wondered if the statues were carved before or after the death of each Avatar.

Eventually, she circled around back to Roku again, and she peered up into his wise old face. This man had been the most recent Avatar before the war broke out. Had he known what was coming when he died? Had he tried to stop it?

Before she could ponder that much further, though, the statue's eyes flared with a brilliant white light... the same light she had seen burning in Aang's eyes when he had risen from the ocean on a furious waterspout two days earlier. The eyes of the Earth Kingdom woman next to him began to glow, and then the man next to her and the woman next to him... one by one, the eyes of every statue lit up, showing clearly the dizzying spiral of statues as it vanished into the gloom far above her.

"Aang," she whispered, shocked. She wasn't sure how she knew, but her intuition was crying out that whatever was happening was something to do with her new friend.

Without wasting another second, she turned on her heel and fled out of the sanctuary. She ran up the hall before bursting out into the late afternoon sunlight. She paused on the ridge, looking around her in a panic, wondering where on earth they could have gone. "Air-ball courts, where are the air-ball courts?" she muttered to herself.

But before she could make a decision about which direction to try, the solution presented itself to her. The sky darkened above her as heavy clouds rolled in much too quickly to be natural, and a howling wind rose across the mountain, tearing at her hair and parka. A splintering noise reached her ears from somewhere down below, and she peered down the slope to find the source.

It wasn't hard to spot: a large, low building was at the center of the sudden maelstrom, and the tiled roof had blown completely off and been sent smashing down the mountain. Squinting in the sudden dimness, Katara spied two figures at the center of the building, obviously Aang and her brother.

She didn't hesitate, but took off running as fast as she could down the winding path, cursing the dangerous terrain that prevented her from running straight to where they were. Even so, she reached the building with remarkable speed. She was fighting against the press of the wind, but her desperation and worry leant wings to her feet.

She ducked underneath the snapping curtain that barred the entrance to the open space at the center of the building and approached Sokka, one hand raised to shield her eyes from the sting of the wind. As she struggled forward, she caught sight of Aang. His eyes and tattoos were alight with the same glow she'd seen in the sanctuary, and he had risen from the ground, suspended in a whirling ball of energy, his fists clenched in rage. The full power of the Avatar was unleashed on the mountainside, and Katara had to struggle to reach the rock her brother was clinging to just to stay grounded.

"What happened?" she cried over the gale.

"Aang found out that firebenders killed Gyatso!" Sokka yelled back, pointing across the courtyard to where a skeleton rested in a corner, sheltered in just such a way that the bones had survived the ravages of time. All throughout the courtyard were random pieces of Fire Nation armor, mostly blown back against the outer walls by the force of Aang's fury. Katara ducked as a spiked helmet, lifted by the wind, came hurtling towards her head.

"He's gonna blow us off the mountain!" Sokka yelled.

"I'm gonna try to calm him down," she assured him. She took a few struggling steps towards Aang, but the closer she got to him, the more intense the wind became and she was forced to stop some distance away. "Aang!" she yelled. "Aang, listen to me! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry that this happened to you. I know you're upset right now. It hurts so much to lose the people you love. I went through the same thing when I lost my mom, but I promise, it will be okay! You won't be alone. Monk Gyatso and the other airbenders may be gone, but you still have a family. Sokka and I will be your family now!"

To her relief, her words seemed to reach him. The energy storm he had created died away and he drifted back to the ground. The moment the pressure of the wind released her, she darted forward to stand at his side, and she sensed Sokka following close behind her.

The glow from Aang's eyes and tattoos did not fade, but Sokka said, "We're here for you, buddy. Promise. We won't let anything happen to you."

Katara, for her part, took that promise to heart. Somehow or other this strange, sweet, complicated airbender had wormed his way into her affections, and she knew she would fight to the death to protect him from any further harm. To seal the promise for them both, she reached out and took Aang's hand, which was uncharacteristically cold.

The instant her skin touched his, the unearthly light finally faded from his eyes. He groaned softly and swayed on his feet before collapsing into Katara's arms.

Without hesitation she gathered him close, hugging him as tight as she could. She had started the day afraid of having to see him in exactly this kind of pain, and now that it had happened, all she could think to do was try to shelter him from any more and offer whatever comfort she could, and so she held Aang tight and tried to lend him some of her strength.

"I'm sorry," Aang whispered.

"Don't be. It wasn't your fault," Sokka assured him.

"You were right, though," Aang said sadly. "The firebenders did come here. And if they came here..."

He didn't have to say it. If the Fire Nation had attacked this Air Temple, it wasn't hard to imagine that they had attacked the other temples as well.

"I really am the last airbender," he said softly.

Neither Sokka nor Katara could think of anything to say that would make that painful truth any easier to swallow.

* * *

That night they made camp in a valley several miles north of the Air Temple. Night had nearly fallen by the time they stopped and a low mist was creeping along the valley floor, so Sokka expertly set about making a fire while Aang and Katara unloaded Appa's saddle.

When the process of setting up camp was complete, Aang said, "I'm gonna take a walk."

Katara cast him a worried glance. "Want some company?" she asked.

"No, I'd really just like to be alone for a little while."

Aang didn't have the heart to tell her that her concerned tone and sympathetic looks were a big part of the reason he wanted to take a walk. He was so grateful that he had such loyal and compassionate friends with him, but the two of them had been tiptoeing around him ever since his meltdown at the temple. It was making him nervous, and he needed time on his own to reflect on what he'd discovered.

"Okay," Katara said reluctantly.

With a nod to the two of them, he turned and headed into the woods. He wandered aimlessly for some time, until the little flickering light of the campfire had vanished into the mist and he was out of earshot. Then, he found a low rocky outcropping and bent himself up onto it on a little swirl of wind. He settled himself down and drew his legs up to his chest, resting his chin on his knees thoughtfully as he gazed out at the swirling dark sea of mist.

His head was a mess.

Finding Gyatso's skeleton really shouldn't have provoked him the way it had. He'd been taught better self-control than that, he was sure. And besides, he'd already known Gyatso was dead. His mentor had not been a young man a century ago, and realistically Aang should have realized that with the passing of a hundred years, even if by some miracle Sokka and Katara _had_ been wrong and there were still some airbenders left, Gyatso would not have been among them. It shouldn't have come as such a shock.

Except that it _had_.

The tears came suddenly, pouring hot down his cheeks. Aang buried his face in his knees and sobbed. He cried for Gyatso and for his fellow temple novices and for the brave sky bison who had died trying to help defend the temple from firebenders. He cried for his people, now gone, and for all his other friends from around the world who had surely died of old age while he'd been gone. He cried for a century of war and suffering that had passed while he had slept beneath the sea. Aang felt as though he might never stop crying, because how could there be tears enough for everything that had gone so horribly wrong?

He felt torn apart. He was the Avatar, but he didn't want to be. He was expected to end a war and stop the Fire Lord and save the world, but how could he, when he could barely take care of himself or understand what was happening to him? His whole world had dissolved in the blink of an eye, and all he wanted was to curl up in the darkness and pray that this was all some horrible nightmare because it _had_ to be, but he couldn't do that because if it _wasn't_, the world was counting on him to do his duty and protect it, but he didn't know _how_...

Aang cried so hard and for so long his throat grew raw and he wondered how he still had any tears left in him, but he _couldn't stop_.

Suddenly, though, he felt a light touch on his hands and looked up, choking in an unsteady breath as he did so. To his amazement, he found himself looking into the wide green eyes of a bat-lemur. It was the same lemur that had taken such a liking to him earlier in the day. The little thing trilled at him in concern before bounding over his knees to slip into the little gap between Aang's torso and legs, within the circle of his arms. He let out another little chirp and rubbed his head along Aang's shoulder affectionately.

The young airbender let out a weak, watery chuckle and stroked the lemur's ears gratefully.

"Hi, little guy," he said in a voice that was raspy from his sobbing. "What are you doing here? Did you follow us all the way from the temple?"

The lemur chirped happily and clambered up onto Aang's shoulder, draping himself around his neck and settling in contentedly. For some reason, the action was immensely comforting to him, and despite his misery, he smiled.

"I guess you're sticking around, huh?"

The lemur let out a yawn and snuggled closer into Aang's warm body.

"I'll take that for a yes," he said. He wiped his eyes in a vain attempt to hide the fact that he'd been crying, and got to his feet. The lemur let out a little noise of protest at the sudden jostling, but Aang ignored his outrage. "Come on, little guy. If you're gonna come with us, you'd better officially meet the rest of the gang. I bet you'll really like Katara. She's nice."

At that thought, a genuine smile crossed Aang's face. He had lost so much, but there was a bright side, too. If none of this had happened, he wouldn't have gotten to meet Sokka or Katara. After everything that had happened at the temple before he'd left, it was wonderful to have friends who didn't seem to be bothered by the fact that he was the Avatar. Although their friendship was still new, Aang liked Sokka immensely, and felt that if he'd ever had a brother, he'd have wanted him to be just like Sokka. And as for Katara... well, Katara was something special. Aang wasn't sure just what it was about her, but he'd never met anyone like her and he was so grateful that it was she who had broken him out of the iceberg.

"We'd better get back to camp," he informed the lemur. "I bet they're getting worried about me."

* * *

**A/N-** Please review. I pour my heart and soul into this thing and I love getting feedback very much. You guys are great! Hugs and kisses! Or, if you like your personal bubble, fist-bumps and high-fives!


	10. Chapter 9: Welcome to Kyoshi

**A/N-** And now things are going to get interesting... Also, if I fail at Chinese, I sincerely apologize. I did the best research I could, but I don't even really have a basic working knowledge of the language, so the character I chose may possibly not say at all what I thought. It was very deliberately selected because certain people are sneaky and hide behind fake names that actually hold the key to their real identity and... well, let's just say I love the fact that Chinese characters can mean like five different things based on context, because it makes it so much easier to be clever. So here's to hoping I didn't cock it up or something, because I'm rather pleased with it and I'll be quite put out if language!fail on my part made all the cleverness go to pot.

**Also, a note about timeline:** Zuko left port the day after his confrontation with Zhao. The Agni Kai was also the day after the Gaang visited the temple. Aang, Katara, and Sokka arrive on Kyoshi two days after visiting the temple. Zuko receives the letter a little over three days after leaving port. Therefore, the first scene of this chapter happens AFTER the Gaang get to Kyoshi, which is a tad confusing but I chose to arrange it that way for aesthetic reasons.

**Phooka-** The greatest Avatar fanfiction writer ever? I highly doubt that, but it's an amazing compliment to receive and I thank you most heartily. It's encouraging to be held in such high esteem. And fear not- we're definitely getting flashbacks to Aang's past. Though as to when that will come into play... well, that's for me to know and you to find out. *cackles evilly* *abruptly decides that evil isn't working for her* *giggles happily instead*

* * *

~*Book 1: Wind & Water*~

Chapter 9: Welcome to Kyoshi

"_Long time to see but I always thought us two would be serious _  
_I was looking around town, thinking the same as you_  
_I'm far gone but your long distance call _  
_And your capital letters keep me asking for more..._"  
-Paramore

* * *

The letter arrived by messenger bird on the third morning after pulling out of the port at Yosano. It was Iroh who first received the message, and he was intrigued before he had even touched the scroll. For a start, the bird was not the standard red-feathered hawk favored by the Fire Nation military for message-bearing. It was a rare black falcon-dove, a breed both smaller and less hardy than the standard hawk, but also much swifter. Secondly, the bird had no colored ribbon to code the urgency of the message it bore.

It was addressed to Zuko, and Iroh was sorely tempted to satisfy his curiosity by reading it before carrying it to the intended recipient. However, he resisted the urge and walked to his nephew's cabin post-haste. More or less.

"The only reason you should be disturbing me is if you have news of the Avatar," Zuko said in a deceptively silky tone when Iroh entered his quarters. His nephew was settled in the lotus position on the floor, meditating with four lit candles arranged before him, the flames rising and falling in time with his breath.

Side-stepping the previous statement, Iroh said, "There is a letter for you that came with a rather strange bird."

Zuko opened his eyes and looked over his shoulder.

The aging general lifted his wrist to display the falcon-dove still perched there.

The prince's golden eyes widened. "Give me that!" he demanded, leaping to his feet and snatching the scroll from his uncle's hands. He unrolled it rapidly and Iroh peered over his shoulder to read it.

The message inside was short, the calligraphy penned in bold, precise strokes. Iroh determined immediately that the author was a confident, self-possessed individual, prone to saying much with very few characters.

The letter simply read:

_A few days back the Fire Sages sent a messenger to the palace. Something happened at the temple. You're not the only one looking for him anymore. I could probably go to prison or something for telling you that, so make it worthwhile._

It was signed with a single character: 娴

"Who is this Xian fellow who's writing to you?" Iroh asked, puzzled.

Zuko glanced at him, looking equally baffled. "I have no idea." Suddenly, his eyes narrowed. He looked back at the brief message, studying it intently.

"What-?"

"SH!"

A few moments passed in silence while Zuko stared at the letter and Iroh looked at Zuko, before the young prince's eyes were drawn swiftly back to the name. He gazed at the sole character as if trying to see straight through the ink and parchment. Iroh was watching closely, and so caught the exact moment that a flare of revelatory understanding sparked in his nephew's eyes.

"Who sent it?"

"That's not important," Zuko blustered. "What is important is that now we know for sure that somehow word of the Avatar's return has reached the capitol. We can't afford any more delay. I need a lead on his whereabouts and I need it fast, if I'm going to capture him before the military and bounty hunters catch up to us."

He tucked the mysterious letter into his sleeve and abandoned Iroh in the small cabin, striding out into the cramped hallway and already yelling for Lieutenant Jee.

* * *

Katara was worried.

In the two days since leaving the temple, Aang had been very quiet. He had smiled when called upon to do so and talked if she or Sokka prodded him into conversation, but the smiles had been wan and he spoke with a hesitancy that hadn't been present in his voice before the forced revelation of what had happened to Gyatso and the other airbenders.

She didn't blame him. He was grieving. Katara had once thought that she had experienced the harshest grief imaginable when her mother had been taken away, but even thinking about everything that Aang had lost was enough to make her heart hurt for him. His whole world had been ripped away in a flash and all he'd been given in return was a destiny he'd said himself he never particularly wanted.

But as much as Katara understood his need to grieve in his own way, she couldn't help but worry. She wanted her optimistic, happy friend back, and wished there was something she could do to make him feel better. There wasn't much she could do, unfortunately.

Curiously enough, the flying lemur that had followed them from the temple had a great deal more success. Aang had taken an immediate liking to the little creature, and the feeling was mutual. He had christened the lemur Momo, and his antics had done more to get Aang smiling again than all of Sokka's stupid jokes and Katara's gentle support combined. She was grateful that he had something to distract him from his undoubtedly depressing thoughts, because two days of monotonous non-stop flying, first through the rest of the Patola Range and then out over the vast sea once more, did not provide a whole lot to keep him mentally occupied.

As the afternoon of the third day peaked, Appa began to show signs of exhaustion. They had been making long days of it, and the previous night had been uncomfortable and restless for everyone, Appa included. They had still been over the water when dusk had fallen, and Sokka had refused to keep traveling after nightfall while over the open ocean. Therefore Katara had, with no small amount of difficulty, frozen a swathe of seawater until she had created an ice sheet both broad and thick enough to support their weight. It had drained her almost entirely of energy even with Aang's help, but as tired as she had been, the rocking and shifting of their little platform kept her (and the rest of the little company) awake long after full dark.

Even Appa, it seemed, had suffered a restless night. By the time the sun passed its zenith he was already dropping in altitude, and by mid-afternoon he was reducing his speed in a futile attempt to conserve energy.

"Just a little further, buddy," Aang said. "I'm sure we'll reach the coast soon."

Momo chittered in what Katara could swear was a pessimistic tone and ducked down below the rim of the saddle. Katara smiled and rubbed the lemur's head affectionately: Aang wasn't the only one who had taken a liking to the little guy.

A few minutes later, Sokka called out, "It's not the coast, but how about an island?"

"An island?" Aang confirmed.

Sokka nodded and pointed off to the starboard side. Sure enough, just a mile or two away was a small crescent-shaped island. Aang let out a whoop of relief and guided Appa in a graceful arc towards the island.

They were flying too low to get a very clear view, but from what they could see, the little island was densely forested with a mixture of pine and low-growing shrubs. A few random patches of white that could be seen here and there indicated that a recent snow had mostly melted off. Most of the coastline was rocky, but at the very back of the otherwise protected cove, in a direct line from the open sea, there was a narrow strip of beach composed of fine-grained sand. It was for this part of the island that Aang headed.

A few minutes after spotting the little spot of land, they settled down gently on the sand. The three human passengers disembarked, and Appa immediately flopped down with a deep bison groan of relief. Momo was startled free from his place on the saddle and began swooping around them, voicing his discontent for anyone willing to listen.

"Thanks, buddy," Aang told the bison, giving him an affectionate pat. "We'll take a break until tomorrow, okay?"

Appa rumbled in agreement.

* * *

It was the noise of the animal that attracted her to the waterfront.

Ayoki had been foraging for the winter berries that flourished in the shady undergrowth of the forest when sounds from the waterfront attracted her attention. Drawing reflexively on the training she had devoted the better part of her life to, she moved as silently as a coyote-leopard through the brush. Once she reached the edge of the forest, she dropped to her hands and knees on the sandy, needle-coated ground beneath the trees. She slunk on her belly through the bushes, which are always thickest at the outermost edges of any wood, where they can reach the most sunlight, and peered out toward the beach.

Three young people and a massive animal had apparently made landfall. Ayoki studied them through narrowed eyes.

The eldest was a tall, handsome boy in his late teens, and she made careful note of the fact that he was armed. With him were a blue-eyed girl and a slightly-built bald boy dressed in strange clothes the likes of which Ayoki had never seen before. And as for the animal... she couldn't see it well, given that it's back was to her, but she could see that it had many legs and the tips of two horns were visible rising above the broad swell of its back.

The two teens were dressed in Water Tribe blues, but Ayoki was mistrustful. Water Tribe people never came to Kyoshi Island... or at least, they hadn't since long before she was born. After the decimation of the Southern Water Tribe many decades before, and the Northern Water Tribe's retreat behind their great ice walls, the sight of a Water Tribe national anywhere in the Earth Kingdom was rare, but on distant, isolationist Kyoshi Island it was almost unheard-of.

Strangers on the beach... strangers with no boat. How had they gotten here if they didn't have a boat? The only possible explanation was that they had been dropped off by a ship. But why?

Ayoki chewed her lip, then retreated the way she had come, keeping low to the ground and taking care not to disturb so much as a single leaf to give away her position. Once she had made it out of earshot, she rose to her feet. She turned and ran, fleet-footed, in the direction of the village she called home.

* * *

Aang quickly came to the conclusion that he liked the little island they had stumbled upon. It felt comfortingly familiar, somehow. Something about the smell of the air, maybe, or the beauty of the natural harbor. Whatever it was, he felt connected to the place and the feeling eased a tension he hadn't even been aware he was carrying in his body. The heavy sense of unreality that had plagued him since the brutal discovery at the temple faded into his mental background, and he started to feel like he fit into his own skin for the first time in days.

The feeling that he was returning to normal only increased at the shot of excitement he felt when he spied something large and a deep scarlet-orange breaching the waters of the bay.

"Look!" he cried, pointing excitedly. "Elephant koi!"

Sokka and Katara both stared where he was pointing, and were rewarded a moment later when a second massive fish that was large enough to dwarf even Appa shot to the surface in an acrobatic leap.

"Whoa! They're huge!"

"No kidding," Sokka agreed. "One of them would feed a whole village for weeks- maybe months!"

Katara swatted him, and returned to watching the fish leaping with a look of awe on her face.

"I've always wanted to ride an elephant koi," Aang said, a grin slowly spreading across his face. "Oh man, I've gotta try it!"

Sokka gave him a skeptical look and opened his mouth to speak, but before he could get a word out, Aang was already sprinting for the shore, stripping off his clothes as he went. By the time he hit the water he had stripped down to just his underwear and he dove straight into the clear water without hesitation. This turned out to be a mistake when he discovered that, given the time of year, the water was near-freezing. It didn't deter him though, and soon he was pulling out into deeper water with strong, steady strokes.

He waited patiently for the next time a fish broke the surface. When it did, he caught its fin and grasped tight, tagging along as it launched into the air. He sucked in a deep breath a split second before they hit the water, and held it in as they streaked along through the deep. A little bit of clever airbending helped him avoid being injured when the fish dragged him down to a depth that would ordinarily have caused a human more than a little discomfort from the pressure.

A few very long moments later, they broke the surface in another wild leap, and Aang threw his head back in a spurt of wild, joyful laughter. It occurred to him that this was exactly what he needed: a distraction. Something to get him out of his own head so he wouldn't keep seeing skeletons and scorch marks every time he closed his eyes. He surrendered to the pure exhilaration of riding the fish, the icy spray of the ocean splashing across his legs (and occasionally his chest and face), the smell of the ocean air.

Aang turned to glance back at the shore, and what he saw there made him laugh harder. Sokka was staring at him with an expression that clearly said he thought he was crazy. Katara, on the other hand, had a huge grin on her face that set Aang's stomach to fluttering. He waved excitedly at her, and she waved back, bouncing up and down enthusiastically. Aang had a split second to consider that he liked seeing her face light up like that before he and the humongous koi were back under the water.

When they came back up again, it wasn't for another wild leap but just for a long run at the surface with the fishes' dorsal fin and consequently Aang just skimming above the water. He looked again back at the shore, a ready grin on his face, but the expression slipped when he saw that Katara was no longer watching- in fact, she was wandering off somewhere else entirely.

"Aww, man..." he muttered.

Sokka, on the other hand, seemed to finally be getting into the spirit. He was waving eagerly with both hands. Aang waved back and gave him a thumbs up. Sokka gestured even more enthusiastically. Aang could just barely hear his voice calling over the rush of wind and water that filled his ears, and he nodded back at him.

Katara returned to the beach, and Aang was just about to wave to her as well when a sudden lurch beneath him sent him flying. He tumbled head over heels and hit the water hard. He righted himself and shook his head, trying to work out what had gone wrong.

His eyes returned to Sokka and Katara as a swell lifted him up slightly... and it suddenly started to dawn on him that they had fearful expressions on their faces. Apprehension settled in the pit of his stomach and he glanced behind him.

This turned out to be both a good idea and a horrible mistake.

Rising out of the water behind him was a massive creature the like of which he had never seen. It was some sort of massive eel-serpent, with slimy dark grey skin and a body as thick as a tree. The portion of it that had lifted free from the waves was easily fifty feet long, and it gazed at him with malevolent, luminous eyes. Its' mouth opened to reveal hundreds of razor-sharp teeth.

Any and all thoughts of impressing Katara fled his head and he let out a scream of terror. He leapt right out of the water and, with the speed and grace of an airbender on his side ran right across the surface of the bay, so fast his feet hardly even touched the water. Aang was so panicked by the abrupt appearance of the massive sea-monster that he didn't notice until a second too late that he was on a collision course with Sokka.

He plowed right into the very shocked young warrior, sending both of them slamming back into the sand. There was a moment of silence, then Sokka groaned, "Ow."

"Wow, sorry, Sokka," Aang said, rolling away from him and giving him an apologetic grin.

* * *

Katara reached down to help Sokka up as Aang airbended himself easily back to his feet and began pulling on his clothes.

"Next time, listen when we tell you to get out of the water," she said with a roll of her eyes.

If Aang had a reply to that, she didn't get to hear it. They heard a soft rustle of fabric, and then in the work of a moment, Katara found herself slammed to the ground with someone's knee at her back. In short order her hands were bound, her eyes were blindfolded, and she was well and thoroughly captured. Seconds later, she felt Aang and Sokka being thrown down with her. Sokka landed at her left with a heavy groan and Aang, still damp and shirtless from his koi-riding adventure, was deposited to her right, half-landing on her and driving the breath right out of her.

"I guess this means we're staying awhile," Sokka muttered.

They were hauled bodily to their feet and forcibly marched away from the beach. Katara estimated that they were dragged a good mile, most of it on a gentle upward slope, and she guessed that they were heading inland toward the center of the island.

The destination proved to be some sort of thick wooden post, which she and the boys were slammed up against and summarily tied to. Katara winced at the sensation, knowing she was bound to have some lovely bruises from the experience. She only hoped that was all she was going to have to endure.

"You three have some explaining to do." The voice was authoritative, rich, male, and the first one they had heard since the unprovoked attack.

"Why do we have to explain anything? You're the ones who attacked us!" Sokka protested.

"We do not take kindly to strangers creeping around our island without declaring themselves. Who are you?"

Katara could feel by the tensing of the rope that bound the three of them to the post that Sokka was straining to get free. "Why you-!" he started, then broke off in a pained whine when Katara kicked him in the shin.

"My name is Katara of the Southern Water Tribe," she said. "This is my brother, Sokka, and our friend, Aang."

"And what _exactly_ are you doing here, Katara of the Southern Water Tribe?" a new voice piped up. The second speaker was female, obviously young, with a sweet voice that did not at all match the threatening tone she was using.

Before Katara could answer her, Sokka- who clearly had not gotten the hint when she'd kicked him- shouted, "Show yourselves, you cowards!"

To her unending surprise, his demand was actually met. A moment later, her blindfold was pulled off, and she stared at the people arrayed in front of her.

The owner of the male voice was an elderly man who, despite his advancing years, still stood straight and carried himself proudly. His silver hair was bound up in a stout topknot in the style of the western Earth Kingdom, and he was of low, sturdy build. He watched them with suspicious brown eyes.

More interesting than the old man, however, were the girls. There were seven of them, all looking between the ages of fourteen and twenty. They were dressed in identical forest-green uniforms. Their faces were painted white and their lips were lined with crimson, with elaborate wings of scarlet and black about the eyes, and they wore tasseled headdresses. Each of them carried two metal fans. The one standing nearest them was a girl with hair of a striking auburn color Katara had never seen before, and appeared to be some sort of leader. She had her fans spread to reveal that the edges were razor-sharp.

"You had better answer all our questions, or we'll throw you back in the water with the Unagi," she said, snapping one fan closed and pointing it threateningly at Aang, who gulped.

"Who are you?" Sokka demanded. "Where are the men who ambushed us?"

"There were no men," the girl shot back hotly. "We ambushed you."

The moment she heard Sokka's disbelieving chuckle, Katara felt certain they were doomed. Before she could kick him again to shut up him, he blurted out, "Wait, there's _no way_ a bunch of girls took us down!" Katara groaned and stamped on Sokka's foot. Aang dropped his head down and shook it sadly at Sokka's obvious blunder.

The uniformed girl had a rather different approach. She darted forward, lightning-fast, and seized the collar of Sokka's parka. "A bunch of girls, huh?" she hissed, pulling him forward roughly so that the ropes binding him were pulled painfully taut across his chest and he was very close to her face. "Sounds like the Unagi's going to have a feast tonight."

"He didn't mean it!" Aang cried.

"My brother's just an idiot," Katara added.

With a sour look, the girl released Sokka and pushed him back against the pole.

Katara took note that her actions had loosened the rope ever so slightly. She looked around, trying to work out if they'd even be able to get away if they managed to slip free. They were in a small but obviously well-off village situated in a broad clearing about halfway up the slope of the island. She could see a crowd of curious villagers watching from a safe distance. Katara supposed they might be able to avoid being recaptured if they somehow made it to the trees, but that was a long shot...

"How can we be sure you are not Fire Nation spies?" the old man asked.

"Look at us!" Katara exclaimed. "We're obviously not Fire Nation."

"You say you're from the Water Tribe," the girl said, "and the two of you do seem to look like it. But it wouldn't it be the first time someone has turned traitor for the Fire Nation."

"I never would!" Sokka shouted.

"You'll forgive me if I don't take the word of a flaming misogynist as reliable," the auburn-haired girl shot back.

The old man stepped between them, placing a gentle but authoritative hand on her shoulder. "At ease, Suki," he said. Turning back to the three traveling companions, he said, "If you are not spies, then how did you get here? We know you did not dock at the fishing harbor, and you did not have a boat beached in the cove."

"We came by flying bison," Aang piped up helpfully.

He spared the young airbender only the barest of skeptical glances before focusing on Sokka once more. "Come now, young man. It is in your best interests to be honest with me. Kyoshi Island has stayed out of the war so far, and I intend to make sure it stays that way."

Katara felt Aang start beside her, and then he piped up, "Wait, this island is named for Kyoshi?"

"Yes, what of it?"

"I know Kyoshi!" Aang exclaimed.

Katara felt an abrupt flare of optimism that the situation might still be resolved peacefully. She was utterly confused as to what Aang was talking about, but she trusted him to get them out of this.

"That is impossible," the old man said dismissively. "Avatar Kyoshi was born here over four hundred years ago. You could not possibly know her."

"I know her because I'm the Avatar," Aang responded.

Whispers broke out among the villagers huddled in the background, and the warrior girls exchanged dubious looks.

"He's lying," the auburn-haired girl said. "He has to be. The Avatar vanished a century ago! You're barely a teenager."

The old man sighed. "This is getting us nowhere," he muttered. "We can't take any chances that they might be spies. Girls, throw them to the Unagi."

Katara's stomach dropped at the thought of the vicious serpent waiting in the bay. "Aang, do something!" she exclaimed.

"On it!" he shot back, and the next moment, she saw him use his slender frame to his advantage as he slipped right out of the rope binding them to the pole. To her amazement, he ripped the rope keeping his hands bound, and launched himself into the air on an impressive updraft, and with a whirl of his hands he sent a burst of air into the sky. Moments later, he touched lightly back down on the ground, and the thin layer of clouds that had been hanging over the sea and island all day was blasted apart. Sunlight streamed down upon them.

The village was dead silent.

"So it's true," the old man murmured, shock on his face.

As one, the green-clad warrior girls dropped to the ground, kneeling before Aang reverently. The old man turned to the cluster of villagers, who had grown in number since Aang had cleared the sky. "The last airbender has returned!" he cried. "Avatar Aang has come to Kyoshi Island!"

The people burst into enthusiastic cheering. One citizen even got so over-excited, he began foaming at the mouth and collapsed right there on the ground.

Aang, for his part, turned and shot Katara a slightly panicked glance. She shrugged.

"Girls, free the Avatar's friends immediately!" the old man commanded. Immediately, two of the warriors rose from their prostrate positions. One slipped short daggers from her belt and went to work on cutting through the ropes on Sokka and Katara's hands, while the other hurried around to the back of the post and untied the longer rope which held them there.

Katara rubbed at her wrists, slightly chaffed from the ropes, and went to stand beside Aang. Sokka joined her a moment later, grumbling under his breath and glowering at the auburn haired girl still kneeling on the ground.

"You guys okay?" Aang asked quietly.

"Just peachy," Sokka snapped.

"We're fine," Katara replied more gently.

"My deepest apologies, Avatar Aang, and to you Katara and Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe," the old man said. "You must surely understand how suspicious we are of outsiders in these troubled times. Our isolation here on Kyoshi keeps us separate from the war, but our policies regarding travelers keep us safe."

Aang nodded. "No worries."

The old man smiled warmly at him, then shook his head abruptly. "Oh, but where are my manners? Avatar, my name is Oyaji. I am one of the elders here. If it pleases you, I would like to invite you and your companions to stay with myself and my family as long as you remain on Kyoshi."

"Thanks," Aang said. "That sounds great."

Seeing that Sokka was still out of sorts over having been soundly beaten and tied up by a group of women and therefore unlikely to contribute anything productive to the dialogue, Katara piped up, "We're certainly grateful for your hospitality. We've had a rough couple of days."

Oyaji nodded his understanding. "You shall dine with my family tonight, and in the morning we will begin preparing a feast in your honor, Avatar."

"Oh, that's really not necessary-" Aang started, but Oyaji overrode him.

"Nonsense! Your return is cause for celebration. We would be remiss if we did not welcome you properly. Now come," he said, turning slightly to indicate the gently sloping road through town. "I will show you to my home."

The four of them started off, but they had hardly gone a few yards under the awed watch of the townspeople before Aang stopped dead in his tracks, causing Katara to run into him and Sokka to run into her.

"Wait!" Aang exclaimed. "What about Appa?"

"Who is Appa?"

"My flying bison! He must still be down at the beach."

"Ah, of course," Oyaji said. "The warriors mentioned they had seen a large animal with you. I should have guessed. Will this- Appa, did you say? Yes, will Appa be led easily?"

Aang pursed his lips thoughtfully. "He's very smart, and he has great instincts," he said. "Yes, he should, if you're gentle with him."

Oyaji waved to one of the warriors still standing by. "Very well then. I will send my granddaughters to retrieve your bison and bring him up to the village." As the girl he had called over reached them, he said, "Ayoki, would you and your sister go down to the waterfront and fetch Avatar Aang's sky bison?"

"Can you... um, can you also bring my shirt?" Aang asked, blushing. "I didn't have a chance to put it on before you ambushed us."

At his statement, Katara realized that he really was still shirtless. She had been paying more attention to his antics than his attire when he was riding the elephant koi, and after they were ambushed, she had been far too preoccupied to notice, but now that she had she found herself staring. In the arctic conditions under which she had grown up, Katara had never had an opportunity to see any boys shirtless, and despite her inherent modesty she was curious.

Aang's body was lean and wiry. Probably a little on the skinny side she decided, but not in a bad way, exactly. More interesting to her, at least for the present, was taking the opportunity to examine his tattoos. The blue lines on his arms actually started all the way up under his armpits and swept sinuously down his arms to their ending points on his hands. To her surprise, the arrow that started on his forehead ran all the way down his spine before vanishing under the waistband of his trousers.

When she found herself wondering where exactly that line ended, Katara realized she'd been staring openly and blushed, hoping no one else had noticed. She looked away quickly, and tried to focus in on the warrior girl Oyaji had called over- Ayoki, she thought her name was. She was about Katara's age, and though it was hard to tell underneath the heavy face paint, she seemed to be pretty, with a cascade of thick black hair bound up in two loose braids.

"-apologies, Avatar Aang," the girl was saying. "I was the one who first saw you and your friends when you arrived on our shores. I'm afraid it may have been my own mistake that you were so poorly received."

"Oh, don't worry about it!" Aang said genially.

"I'll bring your bison now... _and_ your shirt," she said, with a smirk. With a respectful bow, she turned and walked with light, silent steps back down the hill. She paused long enough to call something indistinct into an open doorway. She was joined presently by a younger girl- presumably her sister- and together the two of them began the trek back down to the beach.

* * *

Oyaji's home was large, being a family home for himself, his wife, and the families of their two children. As such, despite its' size, it was a little crowded. Nevertheless, there was a large empty room on the second floor that Oyaji cheerfully proclaimed was there for their personal use for as long as they chose to remain on Kyoshi Island.

Katara was somewhat awed, as she had been by the whole village. She had known that some Earth Kingdom towns built their homes exclusively of wood, but knowing it and seeing it in person were very different things. And a house with two separate levels was a novelty in and of itself, regardless of the building material. Gran-Gran used to tell her of the days when the Southern Water Tribe was larger, before the Fire Nation had all but destroyed their civilization, and they had had great palaces of ice several stories high. Katara wondered if the homes then had been anything like icy versions of Oyaji's house.

While they were settling into their temporary living quarters, Katara glanced at Aang and saw that he was tapping his fingers nervously against his thigh.

"Is everything okay, Aang?" she asked.

He shrugged. "Yeah, I guess. It's just kind of weird, being treated like the Avatar."

"You _are_ the Avatar, though."

"Yeah, but-!" he started, a note of frustration in his voice. Then he sighed, and looked away. "Never mind."

* * *

**A/N-** Just a few quick bits of business before I let you go. I'm still up in the air about whether or not I'm going to include the Lost Adventures in this. I have a lot of between-episodes original material I intend to include as well, and while I love the LA to bits, I haven't decided what role (if any) they will play in Fireflight (the exception being a certain infamous encounter between Aang and Zhao because HOLY CRAP DARK ANGST WHOA). So I'm leaving the final call up to you, my readers: if you'd like to see some parts of the Lost Adventures included here, please let me know, either in a review here or in my askbox on Tumblr (my URL there is the same as my username).

NEXT TIME:

-Sokka gets humiliated  
-Aang gets a fan club  
-Katara doesn't know how to feel about that  
-Iroh bugs Zuko about the mystery letter


	11. Chapter 10: Boys & Girls

**A/N-** Sorry, guys. Real life took over and then even though my inspiration has been boiling in my head... every single bit of it has been for Book 3. My motivation to write for anything in Book 1 was stunningly low. And then when I finally got the urge to finish this, I had a drug reaction to my medication and yay hospitalization. So that was fun. Anyway, I wrote 90% of this while under the influence of absurd amounts of anti-inflammatory and anti-histamine type medications so if it completely blows... yeah. Blame the meds and my tendency to post unedited literally the second I get done with my basic typo check.

Fun fact: the lyrics I choose to head up every chapter are actually relevant in some way to the text of the chapter. Maybe it's only one scene, but they're always relevant. Sometimes they even say something about the story that isn't immediately apparent without that context (though not always).

**Phooka-** You're clever, you are! Anyway, you're right, Uncle is being a bit serious at the moment. I think the reason for this is that I have a very difficult time writing him, for some reason. Capturing his voice is a challenge, and he almost always comes across sounding more like Season 3 Iroh, even when he should be sounding like Season 1 Iroh. It fits nicely with the concept of this work, I guess, but I'm not particularly happy with it because I don't know that I'm painting an accurate portrait of him yet.

* * *

~*Book 1: Wind & Water*~

Chapter 10: Boys and Girls

"_I see through your clothes _  
_Your nerve damage shows _  
_Trying not to feel _  
_Anything that's real_"  
-Lifehouse

* * *

That evening, Oyaji and his wife welcomed the travelers to their dinner table for a simple but delicious meal. To Sokka's delight, many of the dishes were heavily meat-based which was not particularly surprising given the climate of the region, but Aang limited himself to bread and a generous helping of the boiled radish-carrots.

A few minutes after they sat down, Ayoki appeared. She had removed her warrior's uniform and colorful face paint and they could see that beneath the costume she was indeed a beautiful girl. Her thick black hair and warm brown eyes set into a round, cheerful face was far removed from the fierce warrior they knew she was.

"We brought your bison up to the village," she informed Aang, "and we were able to remove his saddle. However, there isn't a stable on the island large enough for him, so for the time being we put him to pasture just north of the village."

"Thank you," Aang said courteously.

Ayoki stood aside and revealed a younger girl standing behind her, obviously the sister Oyaji had referred to. She looked to be about twelve or thirteen, just a year or two younger than Aang, and she shared her sister's eyes and round face. She had a pouty set to her mouth and soft brown hair cropped to her shoulders.

"This is my sister, Koko," Ayoki said. "Koko, Avatar Aang and his companions Katara and Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe."

Koko bowed respectfully. "It's an honor to meet you, Avatar," she said, shortly before occupying the vacant chair to Aang's left.

"Please, just call me Aang."

Koko giggled. "Alright then, Aang."

Katara raised her eyebrows. The obviously flirtatious tone to the younger girl's voice struck her as highly inappropriate. It didn't seem to her that any respectable sort of girl would flirt with the _Avatar_, of all people, right in front of her _grandfather_. Then again, Koko was younger, and maybe things were different in the Earth King than they were in the Water Tribe. Katara merely consoled herself throughout dinner with the knowledge that Aang appeared oblivious to Koko's contrived-sounding giggles and shallow compliments.

Sokka, for his part, gave Ayoki several sullen looks as the meal continued. Clearly, he was still sore over having been bested by mere _females_. To be fair, Ayoki wasn't helping matters at all by shooting superior glances at him every time he tried to glower at her. The final straw came when she said, slightly pointedly, that ever since the time of Avatar Kyoshi, the people of her island had revered the strength of women warriors and preferred their protection to male warriors.

"I'll go unload Appa's saddle," Sokka said. From the speed with which he moved, it was pretty clear that he couldn't get out of the room fast enough.

"Thanks, Sokka!" Aang called after him.

Katara, however, was not paying any attention to the fact that her brother had thoroughly irritated the Kyoshi warriors and was suffering the consequences. She leaned forward eagerly and asked Ayoki, "I've always wanted to know about the past Avatars. What was Kyoshi like?"

"Her life is extensively chronicled," Ayoki said. "She was a great and mighty Avatar in her day. The Earth Kingdom was still many separate provinces when she was born, and became united under one Earth King for the first time during her lifetime, and many believe that it was only her efforts that kept the nation together as a whole to this day. She was said to be a ferocious warrior and an especially skilled earthbender in particular. Our records of her life say that she dealt justice swiftly and effectively."

Aang, who had been distracted by Koko whispering in his ear, looked up sharply at Ayoki as she spoke about Kyoshi. He was biting his cheek thoughtfully, and his eyes were wide.

Koko, none too pleased to have the Avatar's attention diverted from her, piped up: "Aang, you've hardly touched your food! Don't you want something besides radish-carrots?"

Aang looked around at her, startled. "What? Oh! Um, actually I don't eat meat," he said.

"My apologies, Avatar," Oyaji said, having overheard the exchange. "I wasn't aware of that. You should have said something sooner!"

"I didn't want to inconvenience you," Aang replied.

"Nonsense! If you require anything while staying under my roof, you need only ask."

"Actually, I could use a razor," Aang said ruefully, running a hand along his scalp where, sure enough, a hint of fine black stubble was beginning to appear. "I know I had one when I left the Air Temple but, uh, it seems to have gotten lost at some point in the last hundred years."

Katara laughed at that, because he looked so painfully earnest when he said it, but she caught sight of the faintest twinkle in his eyes that she knew meant he was making a joke. She was relieved, after seeing him so serious for the last few days.

The relief was short-lived, though, because shortly thereafter, Aang subsided back into quiet thoughtfulness. Katara did her best not to fret over him and embarrass him by drawing attention to his preoccupation.

Instead, she focused her attention back on Ayoki. The other girl was chatty and her extensive knowledge of the life of Avatar Kyoshi was fascinating to Katara. She explained that in order to become a Kyoshi warrior, each young girl aspiring to train in the style of bendless martial art the lady Avatar had developed had to study her life and learn the code by which she had lived.

"Avatar Kyoshi was a great woman, and a great leader. We take her example very seriously," Ayoki said.

"I can imagine."

"We even model our uniforms after her customary garb. She is a hero to our people for how fiercely she protected our homeland even during times of war, and we allow her wisdom to guide us to this day."

And so Aang and Katara the meal passed in pleasant company with their new acquaintances. Sokka trudged in and out a few times, bearing armloads of their belongings and a set frown. The former he carried into the room that had been allotted to them, and the latter remained fixed on his face. The last time he walked out the door, however, he did not come back. Katara assumed he was probably nursing his wounded pride.

As evening faded into night, the two weary travelers took their leave of their hosts and headed up to their attic room for the evening.

* * *

Aang was staring out the window, his chin resting on his arms which were folded on the sill. His head was freshly shaved with the razor Oyaji had gifted him with, and he was uncharacteristically still and quiet.

Katara had been attempting to sort out the untidy mess Sokka had made of their belongings when he unloaded Appa's saddle earlier, but somewhere along the line, watching Aang had become more interesting. Kneeling on her bedroll with an array of miscellaneous necessities fanning out around her, she studied his profile openly. His expression was neutral, oh so carefully blank, but she thought she could see something in his eyes. Some inner conflict he was grappling with, reflected in his eyes which had been bleached to silver by the moonlight. A slight wrinkle creased his forehead when the barest hint of a frown touched his face.

She stood up and joined him at his seat by the low window. Upon peering out to see what he was looking at, she saw his eyes were fixed on the forty foot high statue of Avatar Kyoshi that stood at the foot of the village's central avenue. The green and white and gold paint that had been used to decorate the wooden memorial was chipped and faded with age, but the form spoke for itself. Kyoshi stood proud and strong and fierce, watching over the descendants of her people with sharp eyes.

"She looks very impressive," Katara observed quietly, hoping to prod him into speech.

"Yep," he murmured, a strange bite to his words. A moment later, he added in a softer tone: "I had a dream about Kyoshi once."

"Really?"

"Yeah. I was eight at the time, I think. I didn't know who she was then, but she came to me in a dream and we talked."

Katara sat down to join him on the floor, half-leaning on the windowsill herself. "What did you talk about?"

He shrugged. "Don't really remember now. I told Gyatso about it the next day. He said later that it was the last proof the monks needed to know I was the one."

Aang was quiet again, but Katara waited, expecting that sooner or later he would speak when he was ready. Her patience was rewarded a minute later when Aang suddenly lifted his head from it's cradle on his forearms and, ripping his eyes from the statue to meet her gaze, asked, "Is that what people expect me to be?"

"What do you mean?"

He gestured broadly out the open window toward the towering Kyoshi. "_That!_ All big and impressive and intimidating! Do people really expect me to be a... a _warrior_ like that?"

"Aang..."

"Because I don't know if I can do that, Katara. How can I do this- be the Avatar- if the world wants me to be someone like that? That's not how my people behave. That's not what we believe in! That's not what_ I_ believe in!" His outburst faded as quickly as it had come and he leaned his cheek back on his forearms. "I'm just a simple monk," he added miserably.

It suddenly became clear to her where this mood of his was stemming from. As the last of his kind, Aang clearly felt duty-bound to uphold the traditions and beliefs of his people. After all of Ayoki's dinnertime talk of Kyoshi, glorifying her as a warrior queen of sorts, it was easy to see how he felt that his people's code came into conflict with the reality of his role as the Avatar.

Katara laid a hand gently on his shoulder, reassuring him through the comfort of a friendly touch. She wracked her brains for just the right words to put him at ease. And then it occurred to her.

"When I was a little girl, my Gran-Gran and the other tribal elders used to tell legends about the Avatar. No one is still alive who remembers the days of the last Avatar, but our people have a strong oral tradition. Telling stories is how the history of our tribe is remembered, and even when living memory is gone, the stories are still passed on," she said.

"Yeah?" he asked, lifting his head again to meet her eyes.

She nodded. "As a kid, I heard all kinds of stories, but my favorites were always about the Avatar. We mostly tell about Water Tribe Avatars, but there are other stories we know, too. Aang, I know how confusing all this must be for you, but I think... I think every Avatar is different. I mean, uh, obviously-" She stumbled a little over this, hoping that her incomplete understanding of how all this Avatar stuff worked wasn't showing too clearly. "Obviously, because you're all different people, but... I guess what I'm getting at is that you don't have to be Kyoshi. You might be the Avatar, but you don't have to be the same kind of Avatar as she was, right?"

Aang smiled, and Katara thought it was genuine. "I guess you're right," he said.

"I definitely am," she assured him, grinning back at him. "Just be yourself and you'll do fine."

"Thanks, Katara. I'll remember that." He looked up at her through his curly eyelashes and said, almost shyly, "You're a good friend, you know that?"

She was glad that the silver moonlight shining in through the window bleached them both to monochrome, because she was pretty sure she was blushing, though for the life of her she wasn't sure why. "You've had a rough couple days," she said. "A pep talk is the very least I could do."

They watched the moon and the distant ocean together for a few minutes before Aang piped up, "Where do you suppose Sokka is? I thought he'd be back by now."

"Sokka? Oh, he's sulking. He's bitter that he got beat up by a bunch of girls. If I know him, he's probably off in the woods somewhere throwing his boomerang until he accidentally hits himself with it or gets too exhausted to keep going. Bet you anything he'll come slinking back in an hour from now."

Aang snickered.

* * *

Zuko carried the falcon-dove on his wrist up the narrow corridor through the belly of the ship to emerge on the deck. He eyed it thoughtfully, and it gazed right back, clear intelligence in it's eyes. Falcon-doves were rare. Besides the royal family, only a handful of houses amongst the Fire Nation aristocracy could afford to keep such expensive birds. Absently stroking it's jet feathers with his free hand, Zuko couldn't help but shake his head. He had guessed right away who had sent it, even before he had seen the tell-tale signature. He only knew one person who was both wealthy enough to keep a falcon-dove and unconcerned enough to use such a bird for something as mundane as messengering.

The message the bird had carried, however, had been a surprise. Not a pleasant one, either. He supposed he shouldn't have expected the Avatar's reappearance to remain a secret for long, but he had hoped to have more of a head start on capturing him before the word got out. It would be just his luck if some wet-behind-the-ears colony-born captain somehow stumbled into capturing the Avatar before him.

But Zuko was not the sort of man to give in to despair. He already had experience with the Avatar and had witnessed his power first-hand. He had a motivation that no one else in the Fire Nation could hope to match. And thanks to an unlooked-for stroke of good fortune, it seemed that someone in the Fire Nation still cared enough to warn him of his competition. And now it was time to return the bird to it's rightful owner.

His reply was succinct. Into the tube attached to the bird's back ordinarily used for carrying scrolls, he had dropped a stone. It was small, only about the size of the top joint of his thumb, made of the exotic yellow jade that could only be mined in the western Earth Kingdom. When it had come into his possession it had been somewhat rough along one edge, but now it was smooth all over; Zuko had carried the stone on his person for a very long time. The recipient would understand what he meant by it.

Uncle Iroh was sitting on the deck when Zuko emerged, fiddling absently with his pai sho set.

"Ah," he said in an expansive tone. "Returning the bird?"

"Yes."

"May I ask where it will be flying?"

"No."

"Alright, Prince Zuko. I am only concerned."

"Don't be."

Iroh sighed. "Ever since you received that letter, you have been pensive. You cannot blame an old man for worrying."

Zuko's response was to shoot his uncle an irritated glance, then lift his wrist, signaling to the bird that rested there that he was free to take to the skies. With a rush of black feathers, it did so, circling up into the dimming sky above the little port town they were docked at to resupply the kitchen.

"My apologies, Prince Zuko," Iroh said. "I suppose I am worrying for nothing. I just wasn't aware that you knew anyone named Xian."

"I don't," Zuko bit out, and with that, he turned away.

His confused uncle watched him stalk back down into the interior of the ship with his lips pressed together thoughtfully.

* * *

The next day found Aang hiding in the woods, not entirely sure quite how this had happened. The day had started out normally enough, but it had quickly taken a turn he hadn't entirely expected.

It had started when Koko had offered, shortly after breakfast, to take Aang on a tour of the village. He had accepted readily, and the tour had begun innocently enough. She had taken him around the village proper, introducing him to people and showing him the sights. After about half an hour, though, she had led him down a side street. Waiting for them in a walled courtyard at the end of the little lane was a group of young girls, all about Koko's age or just a little younger.

She had introduced them as her friends, and within seconds of his appearance they were all clustered around him, pelting him with questions and begging to look at his arrows.

It hadn't taken long for Aang to start feeling claustrophobic and panic. He had stumbled his way through some half-wit excuse for a reason to leave and fled back down the lane. To his intense surprise, the girls had followed him. When he realized they had no intention whatsoever of leaving him alone, he attempted to lose them by weaving his way through the streets of the village in a more convoluted route back towards Oyaji's house.

But he hadn't been able to shake them, and that was what had led to this _very_ dignified moment he was having, crouching under a bush and praying they wouldn't find him.

"What are you doing down there?" a female voice asked behind him.

Aang jumped in sheer surprise, slamming into the spiny mass of plant matter above his head. Brushing away some loose twigs that had attached themselves to his clothing, he turned around and found Koko watching him with a slightly smug look on her face, and he was pretty sure she knew exactly what he was doing. Flushing in embarrassment, he scrambled to his feet.

"I... uh, thought I saw a hedgefrog. You know, under there," he said lamely.

Koko drew a little nearer to him. "Ooh, do you like animals, Avatar Aang?" she asked coyly.

Katara's words from the night before echoed in his mind. _Just be yourself and you'll do fine._

Okay, he could do that. He had always been a social person, and maybe spending time with some other people would help take his mind off things a little. Koko seemed very sweet, after all, and although he'd only barely met the other girls they also seemed like nice people. He wasn't a thing like Avatar Kyoshi, but they still wanted to spend time with him. Even though he'd been a little overwhelmed by their attention at first, now that he thought about it he was actually kind of flattered. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that he far preferred the attitude these girls were taking towards him to the way his friends back at the Air Temple had behaved in those last months. After all, didn't he deserve to have a little fun before he started worrying about the future?

"Yeah," he answered her at last. "I'm great with animals."

"Great!" she exclaimed. "You have to come with us to Hing's menagerie! It's just beyond the village. The girls and I were gonna go later."

"Sure. That sounds great."

She beamed at him and before he had a chance to reorient himself, she had grabbed him and was dragging him back toward the village, calling to her friends that she had found him.

* * *

Meanwhile, Sokka had come to the conclusion that he had had quite enough. It was bad enough that a bunch of girls playing at being warriors had managed to get the jump on him, but the fact that they had turned him into the butt of a joke afterwards was just humiliating. It had started last night with Ayoki shooting him smirky glances every chance she got but it hadn't stopped there. Throughout the morning, every time he encountered a green-clad girl with her face painted, he had been subjected to stares and snickers.

What was worse, though, was that he knew for a fact that he was being deliberately singled out. They sure weren't making fun of Aang, and he was the _Avatar!_ If anyone should have been able to repel a sneak attack, it should have been him. But no, the whole island was too star-struck by him to make fun of him for getting beaten by a girl. Katara wasn't catching any flack either, which was somehow more irksome.

Well, no more. He was sick and tired of it. He was a warrior of the Southern Water Tribe. He had well and truly made up his mind to show those girls what was what- _especially_ that irritating, snooty girl with the auburn hair!

He marched purposefully up to the door of the dojo where the so-called warriors trained and walked right in to witness the girls training in a series of forms using those metal fans of theirs that they probably thought were some kind of brilliant fighting style but which looked to him a lot more like dance moves.

When their eyes turned to him, he gave them all a winning grin. "Sorry to interrupt your, uh, _dance lesson_," he said. "Just looking for a place to get in a good workout."

Suki turned her eyes on him, one black-lined brow rising skeptically. "You're in the right place for that," she informed him with none of the hostility that showed on her face touching her voice.

"Yeah, I'm the best warrior in my village," he said expansively, stretching his arms by way of warmup, making sure that Suki got a good look at the muscles on his arms and chest, the result of all his years being trained as a warrior and training youngsters in turn. When he caught her eyes trailing over his body just as he'd planned, he smirked. He'd show _her_ who was a tough warrior! "But, ya know, I haven't had a chance to work out much lately, what with looking after the Avatar and all. That's probably why a bunch of girls like you were able to get the jump on me."

"You think so, do you?" she asked. Sokka completely missed the caustic tone she used.

"Oh yeah. I mean, it's sweet that you ladies have your little self-defense class, but ordinarily a Southern Water Tribe warrior would never go down that easily."

"Well then perhaps, O Great Warrior," Suki suggested, still with that bite to her tone, "you could show us a few of your legendary Water Tribe moves?"

Sokka hesitated. That annoying little voice in the back of his head that sounded a little too much like Katara was whispering that he was being an arrogant prick, but he couldn't swallow his pride enough to listen to it. He was rather annoyed with these girls, and Suki in particular, who had holed themselves up on their island and never seen real war the way he had, and still fancied themselves warriors.

"You're on, ladies. Now," he said, facing Suki, "I'm gonna come at you. Try to block me." He dropped into a preparatory stance, noting with some amusement that Suki did not. This was going to be easier than he had thought. He made a quick jab forward, reaching to strike Suki's clavicle with the flat of his hand...

...and then somehow he was on the ground, and the center of his own chest was smarting instead.

"Um. Good," he said uncertainly, rising to his feet once more. "Uh... now that you've got the theory down, let's try it for real." Before she could possibly react, he threw himself at her... only to find himself stopped in his tracks by the end of her fan jabbing into his shoulder, the sharp tips of the metal blades slicing through the shoulder of his tunic to press against his skin. He had no idea how she had done it, but she had successfully halted him in his tracks.

"Okay, that's it!" he cried angrily, and lunged for her.

Suki promptly unbalanced him, bruised his jaw, and bound him up in his own clothing so tightly he fell straight to the ground.

* * *

The little ship commanded by the banished prince of the Fire Nation was churning across the dark water, urged to the maximum possible speed into the headwind at Zuko's orders. A rumor had reached them while in port that the Avatar might be on Kyoshi Island, and even a typhoon would not have been enough to deter the prince from sailing through the night to reach the shores of the faraway aisle. Many of the sailors were put out by the lack of sleep forced on them by the schedule, but at least one occupant of the ship had his mind occupied with very different preoccupations.

General Iroh was pondering calligraphy.

The art of the pen was an ancient and complex one. The written language of the Four Nations was a complex one, especially when compared to the simple characters used by the lost civilization of the Sun Warriors. Each stroke of the pen or brush had meaning, and sometimes more than one.

It was this particular phenomenon that Iroh was ruminating on. Before him on the low table in his quarters sat a single sheet of thin parchment, and on that sheet he had traced a single character:

娴

He had traced it almost half an hour before and he had sat there since, examining it. _Xian_. A common enough Fire Nation name, particularly on the Lower Islands and in the colonies. But as Zuko had rightfully said, he knew no Xian well enough to have justified receiving such a significant note from him. Therefore, Iroh had concluded, the signature on the missive born by the falcon-dove had to be some kind of code. He had at first suspected it lay somewhere in the meaning of the name, but he was beginning to think that it was perhaps in the character itself.

The character used for the name was compound. Iroh turned his attention to pondering the individual elements that comprised it. When separated into two individual components, the characters could be read as 'skilled' and 'refined'... or perhaps 'elegant' would be a better fit.

And suddenly the answer struck him. A smile crossed his face as he understood the hidden meaning behind the signature. Who would have thought?

"Perhaps, nephew, I do not have to worry about you as much as I thought," he said aloud.

The ship steamed onward through the sub-polar waters, moving inexorably in the direction of Kyoshi Island.

* * *

Kyoshi Island was definitely a little world unto itself, Katara had discovered. Although very decidedly Earth Kingdom territory, the islanders' isolationist policies meant that although much of the island's economy depended on the exports from fishing, they had very little contact with the outside world. Their customs were similar to those she had learned about from Earth Kingdom traders when she was a girl, but they were also something unique unto themselves and Katara had noticed a certain Water Tribe twist to their culture. Even their clothing, though cut in the style of the Earth Kingdom, tended to run in shades of blue rather than the dark greens and browns favored farther north.

She had spent much of the day wandering the village, refreshing their supplies- foodstuffs in particular- for the next leg of their journey. The shopkeepers had been more than willing to offer her their wares for free as she was the Avatar's companion, but Katara had insisted on paying (though most of them had negotiated a lower price for her). By the time the islanders were gathering for the feast Oyaji had promised to throw in Aang's honor, she had gathered most of the supplies they would need for at least a week or two.

She had hardly seen Sokka all day, and presumed that he was still off pouting somewhere. Aang, however, was another story. He had spent the entire day with Koko and several of the other young girls of the village. Katara had seen him all over town, the giggling pack of girls following him everywhere and in awe of everything he did. Aang was clearly lapping up the attention they were lavishing on him.

Katara had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, she was glad that Aang seemed happy about being the Avatar for once, and running all over the island the way they had been was probably a great way for him to keep his mind off of what he had seen so recently at the Air Temple. However, the few times she had come closer to Aang and his little fan club, the things she had overheard had made her uncomfortable in a way she didn't quite know how to explain.

Koko, just as she had suspected, was a shameless flirt and she was doing her best to work her charm on guileless Aang. Katara didn't like it. She and her pack were clearly only interested in Aang because he was the Avatar. She was pretty sure that at least some of them would lose interest the second some other shiny something came along to distract them.

Katara sat beside Sokka at the open-air banquet that evening as night fell. Sokka was, as she had predicted, still put out about having been beaten up by the warriors. He just sat there with his arms crossed and his shoulders hunched, muttering darkly under his breath and occasionally gnawing on a roast turkey-pig leg.

Aang, on the other hand, was still on the other side of the clearing being used as an impromptu banquet hall, entertaining his little gaggle of admirers with some silly airbending trick with a marble that Katara was trying very hard not to be impressed by. For the life of her she couldn't fathom why she should be so bothered that he was making friends, but she really was.

When she finally couldn't take it anymore, she lurched to her feet and crossed to him. As she approached, she could hear that he was relaying some story from his childhood.

"...and just as Kuzon was about to be scorched to a crisp, I swooped in at the last second and-"

"Aren't you going to come eat with Sokka and I?" Katara interrupted.

He looked up at her with a cross expression on his face. "In a minute!" he said. "I'm just getting to the good part."

"Yeah!" Koko protested. "Don't go, Aangy, we want to hear the rest of your adventures."

"Aangy?" Katara scoffed.

"I'm in the middle of something," he said. "I'll stop by and see you guys later."

"Fine," she muttered. "See you later." She turned on her heel and strode off in long strides, shoulders tense and mind seething for reasons she couldn't possibly explain to herself.

* * *

Katara was full of too much frustration to want to be anywhere near Sokka at this particular moment, so she wandered aimlessly around the crowd instead. Eventually, she found the leader of the Kyoshi warriors sitting in full regalia, face paint and all, on a log by herself near the bonfire.

"Suki, right?" Katara asked as she joined her.

The other girl nodded. "Yep. And you're... Katara, right?"

"That's me."

"Sokka's sister."

Katara buried her face in her hands at the inflection of her voice when she said Sokka's name.. "_Please_ don't tell me he did something stupid to offend you even more."

"Oh, no. He was perfectly delightful in every encounter we had."

The Water Tribe girl raised her head to stare at the auburn-haired warrior with skeptical eyes. "Seriously?"

"Well, no, actually. But you said not to tell you, so..."

Katara stared at the other girl incredulously for a second before the joke could sink in, then she laughed. "I'm sorry," she said. "What did he do?"

"Do you want the real answer or the 'I'm being polite because you're his sister' answer?"

"The real answer, definitely."

Suki chuckled at her emphatic response. "Okay. He was just being a misogynistic ass. It's nothing I haven't dealt with before, but he was particularly persistent in trying to prove what a big tough man he was. Usually boys realize their mistake after the first time I put them to the ground, but he just kept coming back for more. Tell me, is your brother especially stubborn or just especially stupid?"

Katara snorted. "A little of both." After a few moments of silence between them, however, she added, "He means well, though. He can be an idiot, but he doesn't honestly mean to be that way."

Suki eyed the Water Tribe boy from across the crowd, studying him speculatively. "I guess I can see how he could grow on a person," she mused.

"He does. Give him a chance to get over himself and you'll see."

Suki nodded. "I'll try. No promises, though."

"That's probably about all I can expect," Katara said with a roll of her eyes. "Anyway, enough about Sokka. What's your story? I mean... don't take this the wrong way, but you seem kind of young to be the leader of an elite team of warriors."

"Yeah, a lot of people say that. I guess it's in the blood though. I'm related to Avatar Kyoshi."

"Really?" Katara asked.

"My father was a direct descendent of Kyoshi's younger brother. It was his idea that I train to be a Kyoshi warrior, actually."

"He must be really proud of you."

Suki shrugged. "I imagine he would be, but he died when I was really small. My mom, too. Their fishing boat sank."

"I'm so sorry," Katara said.

"Don't be. I wasn't even three when they drowned. My aunt raised me after that," Suki said dismissively. "I mean... it's hard to miss what you don't even remember, you know?"

"It's still hard to lose a parent."

"I guess."

The two of them were silent for awhile in a silence that was tense but not necessarily uncomfortable as they watched sparks from the bonfire rising up to mingle with the pinpricks of the stars. Katara observed that, though she recognized many of the other Kyoshi warriors among the crowd, Suki was the only one still in full uniform. She wondered what that said about the auburn-haired girl beside her.

A loud chorus of girlish giggles erupted from across the clearing. Katara's eyes were drawn to where Aang was still holding court with the younger girls. All of them were laughing, and as she watched, Koko slapped Aang playfully on the shoulder. She then leaned close to him to whisper something in his ear which caused him to break into laughter once again.

"Um, Katara? Is there any particular reason you look like you're about to glare a hole into the Avatar's head?"

"Huh?" She whipped around to see Suki regarding her with an expression of curious concern. She realized that she really had been glowering at the little group. "Oh, no reason," she covered.

Suki raised an eyebrow as if to say _Oh really?_

Katara sighed. "Fine. I guess I'm just a little annoyed that Aang has let all this Avatar stuff go to his head."

The other girl's brow furrowed in confusion. "But... he _is_ the Avatar."

"Yeah, but he's also Aang and it really isn't like him to let all this attention get to him. He's an airbender, but he's still so down to earth and- oh, you'd have to know him to really get it."

"How long have you known him?" Suki asked.

"Oh, for-" Suddenly, Katara broke off sharply as she mentally counted. "Wow. Now that I think about it, I've only known him for nine days. That's so weird."

"So you really haven't known him long at all?"

Katara shook her head. "I guess not. But I feel like I've known him forever." Her expression turned thoughtful.

Suki studied her thoughtfully. "You wanna know what I think?"

"What?"

"It sounds to me like you're jealous."

Katara jerked upright at that, looking positively startled. "What, jealous of Aang?" she scoffed. "Hardly. Having tons of fangirls chasing me all over the island? Thanks, but I'll skip that."

"No, I mean, it just seems like the two of you are close-"

"We are," Katara interrupted emphatically.

"-And maybe it's bothering you a little that he's spending so much time with people who are, well... _not_ you."

Katara wanted to argue the point, because there were connotations associated with the idea of being jealous over Aang that she wasn't keen to connect with herself... but at the same time, as she thought about it, Suki had a point. Pretty much from the instant Aang had woken up in her arms, she had held a complete monopoly on his time and attention. And even though they had only known each other a little over a week, she had felt a strong bond with him almost immediately and that connection had only gotten stronger as they got to know each other.

So maybe it wasn't surprising that she was a little irritated that he hadn't spent all his time with her today.

"You may have a point," she admitted grudgingly. "I guess I've gotten used to it just being me and him and Sokka."

Suki nodded. "That makes sense."

"Well, I'll just have to get used to it," Katara declared. "After all, Aang _is_ the Avatar. I suppose a part of him is always going to belong to the world."

Privately, Katara thought she would find it a lot easier to share him if she didn't have to split his time with silly little girls who clearly only cared about the Avatar and didn't see Aang at all.

* * *

**A/N-** Sokka's being so sulky... well, he needs to go through it to get where he needs to be. Anyway, I feel like this chapter could have been really funny, but I'm itchy and my hands keep changing color and I feel highly betrayed by my own body so I'm not exactly in a mood to be hilarious (not that I'm especially funny as it is). I suppose if I were a good fanfic writer I would put off posting for a couple days until this reaction has been flushed out of my system and try to make corrections, but here's something you gotta know about Melon: I'm about as patient as Aang on his worst day.


	12. Chapter 11: (Mis)communication

**A/N- **So I wrote Kataang smut, and it completely drained my writing juices for a few days. And in those few days I dreamed up the next epic fic I'll write after Fireflight (I'll just say this: bloodbending AU), and I got really excited about that for awhile and couldn't write anything. And then I got really caught up in organizing a major collaborative effort (I won't say much, but I'm working with a large number of authors including DJNS, Cassidy Alice, and plenty of others, to create a major AU finale/post finale epic, and once it's done, it's going to be INSANE). So basically I got distracted and also this chapter was strangely hard to write even though I was having Sukka feels like I've never had before.

Anyway, this chapter was originally going to be longer, but I was having such trouble with it that I transferred several of the later scenes to next chapter because I felt really bad about making you guys wait this long as it was.

**Phooka-** Yes, there is very much meaning in Zuko's reply. I can't promise you won't have to wait awhile to find out what that happens to be, but I have a method to my madness. Many continued thanks for keeping me on my toes with this story... ;)

* * *

~*Book 1: Wind & Water*~

Chapter 11: (Mis)communication

"_Don't wanna be your little side-note..._"  
-Friday At the Lake

* * *

Aang snored.

Not a lot, not the way Sokka remembered his father's snoring from years ago. Even so, the soft whuffling noise the airbender made in his sleep was keeping Sokka wide awake.

Well, okay, maybe it wasn't so much Aang's snoring that was keeping him awake at all. Maybe it was what had happened that afternoon with Suki in the dojo. He kept replaying it over and over in his mind. The way she had easily dismantled his attacks, the sound of the other girls' ugly laughter as he lay at her feet, humiliated... he had never been so thoroughly embarrassed in his entire life, and he couldn't put it out of his head.

With a heavy sigh, Sokka got to his feet, thinking that perhaps a walk might tire him out and help him clear his mind. He pulled his tunic over his bare chest, grateful that Kyoshi Island was far enough north that, though still chilly, it was warm enough for him to go out for awhile without having to root through Katara's tidily-packed bags for his parka. He'd been soundly beaten by one girl in the last twenty-four hours; he didn't need to top it off with a tongue-lashing from his sister in the morning.

Once suitably dressed, Sokka tiptoed out of the room so as not to wake the others, and crept his way out of Oyaji's house. Once outside, however, he found he didn't know where to go, and ended up wandering aimlessly through the dark village streets.

It really was a nice place, he considered. The island was large enough to support it's occupants through agriculture and fishing, but small and easily defensible, as the rocky coast did not lend itself to landing ships, save for the protected harbor frequented by the giant Unagi and the man-made wharf on the eastern side of the island, both of which were well-guarded. Sokka wasn't surprised at all that Kyoshi Island had managed to ride out a century of bloody warfare in relative peace and safety. If he were the world's most powerful firebender, he _still_ wouldn't want to come up against those girls...

Sokka shook his head, trying to rid himself of thoughts of the Kyoshi warriors.

But it wasn't any good. He couldn't keep his mind off it, off them, especially once he realized that his wandering feet had brought him to their dojo. He sat down heavily on the bottom riser of the short set of steps that led to the door, cradling his head in his hands, elbows resting on his knees.

"What the hell is wrong with me?" he asked aloud.

He honestly couldn't understand why this was still bothering him to the point that he couldn't get past it. After all, he wasn't still seething and smarting over having received a thorough beating at Zuko's hands, and that time he had been taken down by a single teenage prince, not a team of elite warrior women. Really, if he thought about it seriously, being beaten in minutes by one spoiled royal in a fair fight should bother him much more than being beaten by a large number of warriors in an ambush. And yet he had put the fight with Zuko far behind him, while the fact that Suki could similarly defeat him was keeping him up at night. What was the difference?

And all at once, it hit him: there wasn't one. The difference was completely in his head.

Katara frequently called him sexist, but he hadn't given it any credence up until this exact moment. He'd always assumed that it was just Katara being her usual touchy, judgmental self. After all, he wasn't doing or saying anything that hadn't been done and said in the Water Tribes for generations! Women did certain things, and men did certain other things, and that was just how it had always been, end of story.

Except, it appeared that things were different in the Earth Kingdom. Apparently here, women were warriors of the highest caliber and men (if the over-excited gentleman with the tendency to foam at the mouth was anything to judge by) were tailors and potters and cooks.

"You're a long way from home, Sokka old boy," he muttered.

Did Katara have a point? Was he being sexist? He'd never taken the accusation seriously before, because it wasn't like he hated women or anything, but the last two days' events had thrown his perspective on the matter for a loop. If he could take public humiliation in front of his friends and family- whom he'd sworn to protect- in stride when it came from a fellow man, but humiliation by a girl in front of a small number of virtual strangers he'd likely never see after this brief visit left him sleepless and irritable... well, that didn't reflect too well on him, did it?

Sokka flopped backwards, laying awkwardly against the steps as he gazed up at the stars with blue eyes colored with frustration.

* * *

When Katara awoke, it was to find Aang (ever the early riser) already gone. Initially she assumed that he had just left the room to go in search of breakfast, but when a clamor outside drew her to the open window, she discovered something rather different. There Aang was out in the street, showing off some elaborate airbending trick involving a little whirling ball of air he was riding at high speeds through the village. A cluster of girls, maybe ten in all, were watching him in awe and cheering enthusiastically.

"Oh come _on_," Katara groaned. "It's bad enough he spent all day with his little... _fangirls_ yesterday!"

She honestly couldn't understand why he had allowed himself to get caught up in such shallow attention. It wasn't as if those girls actually cared about him. They were interested in what he was, not who he was! They probably wouldn't have given him a second thought if it weren't for the fact that he was the Avatar! Then again, maybe some of them would, she reasoned. After all, Aang was not at all bad looking. It wasn't unreasonable for him to attract some female attention... but still! There was a difference between a girl or two giving him a second look-over from across the street and a pack of sighing fangirls following him around and doing everything they could to inflate his ego!

It smarted that he would fall for such paltry flattery. Aang had always seemed so down to earth... but then again, he _was_ an airbender. Perhaps flightiness was in his nature. And up until now, she hadn't really seen him interacting with anyone besides her family and the relatively incurious members of her village. Maybe his true colors were showing at last.

But as irritated as she was, Katara couldn't convince herself of that. Despite only having known Aang a short while, she _knew_ him. She knew he wasn't that kind of person, only interested in fame and accolades. The soft, pained tone in his voice when he had confessed that he didn't want to be the Avatar was proof enough of that, and she couldn't bring herself to doubt him. Aang was such a sincere, earnest person, and she refused to believe that she had completely misunderstood his character.

When his shout of laughter was echoed by the sycophantic tittering of a dozen silly females, however, it was very hard not to be thoroughly annoyed with him.

* * *

When Suki and the other warriors arrived at the dojo the next morning, Sokka was waiting outside for them. Suki noted that he looked tired, and he had not shaved. She frowned. She'd thought that after yesterday the arrogant Water Tribe boy would stop pestering them.

"What do you want?" she asked sharply.

To her great astonishment, he sank to his knees before her in a gesture of honorable submission. "To apologize," he said soberly. "I insulted you yesterday, and I was a fool. I'm sorry. And... I would be honored if you would be willing to teach me."

Suki glanced at the other girls in her squad, who shrugged, faces impassive. She understood their silence. As tactical leader of the Kyoshi warriors, this decision was hers to make.

In the space of time that followed, she pondered what Avatar Kyoshi would have done. The answer to that was simple: she would have said no. Kyoshi would have turned him down flat. The ways of the Kyoshi warrior were a sacred tradition and had been so since the Avatar, then only a young woman, had invented their unique style of martial art and founded their order to protect their homeland. Training a male in their tradition was exceptionally rare, and an outsider? Never.

But as Suki studied the young man kneeling before her, awaiting absolution or condemnation at her hand, she began to think that this was one case in which adhering to the guidance and thinking of Avatar Kyoshi might not be best. Infuriating as he was, sexist as he was, Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe had proven that he could learn from his mistakes. He wasn't inflexible nor as narrow-minded as he initially seemed. In this case, Suki decided, she would disregard the teachings of her ancestress and let her own intuition guide her for once.

"We rarely teach outsiders our technique, _especially_ boys," she pronounced sternly, and was moderately gratified to see Sokka drop his head in defeat. "_But_," she added, "If you agree to follow all our traditions, I will teach you."

Sokka looked up at her again, startled and visibly pleased.

"I mean _all_ of our traditions," she added firmly.

"Yes, of course!" he agreed quickly.

Suki smirked. "Ayoki!" she called over her shoulder, "get Warrior Sokka here a spare uniform. The rest of you, dismissed!"

Obediently, the other girls in her company filed away, while Ayoki dashed into the small annex to the side of the dojo where their weapons and other gear were routinely stored.

"Wait..." Sokka said slowly, still kneeling on the ground as he digested what had just happened, "Spare uniform?"

"You agreed to follow our traditions, didn't you?"

Sokka groaned and dropped his head as he caught her meaning.

* * *

Still absentmindedly demonstrating a very old, very simple airbending trick with a marble that had proved to be a real hit with some of his new friends, Aang glanced across the square to where Katara was gathering a basketful of assorted winter vegetables, and frowned. She hadn't talked to him all day.

Granted, he had spent most of the day with Koko and his other new friends, but he still thought she would have been willing to come and play with them. He knew for a fact that she would have loved the view from the top of the island, on the high hill the girls had shown him. If you looked very carefully in just the right direction, you could see the mainland in the hazy distance.

But Katara hadn't joined them on the hike up the hill. Katara hadn't been there when he showed the girls the air scooter he had invented. Katara hadn't come with them when Koko insisted on having a group portrait done- and he would have actually _liked_ to have his portrait done with _her! _He knew for a fact that she was avoiding him; at least twice he had spotted her nearby, and the moment she saw him she had taken off in the opposite direction as fast as she could go.

A part of him- the part that still cringed away from the memories of swiftly-averted stares and quickly stifled whispers from boys who were supposed to be friends- wondered cynically if maybe now that the novelty of him being the Avatar had worn off a little, she was starting to lose interest in him.

Aang couldn't really make himself believe that, though. Realistically, he knew they hadn't known each other even two weeks, but he felt that he knew her pretty well. He didn't think she was like that. Katara had cared about him a lot even before she knew he was the Avatar, and she hadn't treated him all that much differently once she did know. She wouldn't stop caring just because they were getting used to each other.

If it wasn't that, though, Aang couldn't fathom what was causing her to be so aloof. She hadn't been that way two nights before, when she had patiently talked him through his near-meltdown over the thought of trying to live up to Avatar Kyoshi's warlike legacy. She had been as warm and friendly as always, and he couldn't understand why her attitude toward him had cooled off so abruptly.

Even as he watched her, she turned and caught sight of him. For a moment, he thought he saw her smile at him, but her expression returned to neutral quickly and she hurried away.

Aang sighed dejectedly, dredged up a smile, and turned to give his attention back to the friends who actually seemed to want to spend time with him.

* * *

"Are you almost done back there?" Suki called.

"Yeah yeah, keep your face paint on, I'll be done in a second."

She rolled her eyes. Sokka took longer to get dressed and ready than any warrior in her squad. Out of curiosity, she leaned close to the dressing screen and peeped through the crack between the folds. The amount of bare male skin she saw made her draw back swiftly, feeling her face flush hot.

"Seriously, you're taking forever!" she called, to cover her embarrassment. "I'm still going to need to do your face paint, you know."

"No, actually, you won't," he replied testily. "The men of my tribe paint our faces in the tradition of the wolf when we go into battle. I'm more than capable of doing it myself."

And when he stepped from behind the screen a moment later, now completely clothed (which was a great relief to Suki's ability to keep her composure), she saw that he was right. He had indeed done an excellent job of applying the traditional colors of the Kyoshi warrior to his skin.

"I feel ridiculous," he grumbled.

Suki smirked and said nothing. He didn't look _ridiculous_, exactly, but it was painfully obvious that the uniform, which had been tailored to a female shape, didn't really suit his lanky body. She almost took pity on him... but some wicked impulse in her wouldn't allow it. He had been more than slightly rude the day before, and his pretty apologies hadn't gotten him out of her bad books yet. With a deliberately composed expression, she thrust a pair of practice fans into his hands.

"Alright, now let's see your stance," she said.

Sokka stared blankly at her, and Suki couldn't help but sigh internally. She clearly had her work cut out for her...

One hour and several near-injuries later, it seemed that Sokka had finally begun to grasp the two fundamental forms which constituted the basis for the unique style of a Kyoshi warrior. However, it was clear to her that Sokka was still relying far too much on raw strength. He knew the form, but didn't understand the theory behind it, as was decidedly proven when his attempt to land a strike on her only resulted in him overbalancing himself and dropping unceremoniously to the floor.

Suki shook her head, chuckling, and offered him a hand. Gratefully, he allowed her to pull him to his feet.

"I just don't understand it!" he grumbled. "It looks so simple when you do it."

She shrugged. "Maybe you should get your sister to teach you," she suggested, only half joking.

Sokka snorted. "Katara, are you kidding? She's never fought a day in her life!"

"Doesn't mean she wouldn't understand our technique," Suki said. "She's a waterbender, right?"

He nodded.

"Well, Avatar Kyoshi developed this style of martial art shortly after she mastered waterbending. When she returned here to her homeland after her Avatar journey, she saw a need for our people to have a way to protect themselves. Earthbenders aren't commonly born here, and we rely on other types of combat to defend our shores. Waterbending is all about understanding movement and redirecting the flow of energy, and Kyoshi used the same thinking to create our techniques."

A hint of comprehension was starting to dawn on Sokka's face, and Suki struggled to bite back a pleased smile as she saw her pupil beginning to understand the lesson.

"This style isn't about brute strength," she continued. "Raw power won't help you. It's all about turning your opponent's force around and using it against them. It's actually a very unusual way of thinking for people of the Earth Kingdom; our scholars think that the reason this style was successful here on Kyoshi Island is because our culture is so heavily influenced by the Water Tribe and it's not such a foreign concept to us."

Sokka nodded slowly. "It's... like using strategy instead of strength," he said slowly.

Suki shrugged. "In a manner of speaking. If it helps you to look at it that way, then yes."

He grinned, blue eyes twinkling at her in a decidedly unsettling fashion. Suki was grateful for her own thick layer of warpaint, because she was pretty sure she was blushing.

"Alright," she said brusquely. "Let's run through that set again..."

* * *

"Hey Katara?"

She perked up instinctively at the sound of Aang's voice. She had been doing a little meditative waterbending to keep her mind off how irritated she was that he had been so easily seduced by the charms of a bunch of silly giggling _girls_, but the fact that Aang was here seemed like an indication that maybe she could stop being annoyed. Not that she planned to let him know that. Neutral reactions. Neutral reactions were the key here. She had no plans to let him know how bothered she was by the whole thing, especially as she couldn't particularly explain her feelings to herself, let alone anyone else.

"Yes?" she asked, not turning around in an attempt to conceal how eager she was to see him without a parade stretching out behind him.

"You know the unagi?"

Katara's optimism deflated abruptly. She was completely positive nothing good could start with a question like that. "You mean the giant, man-eating eel monster that almost killed you two days ago?"

"That's the one."

"What about it?"

"Well, I'm gonna go ride it now."

_Neutral reactions... neutral reactions..._ "Huh."

"Yep. It's gonna be _real_ dangerous."

"Well good for you," she said, not entirely able to keep a peevish tone from her voice.

"Wait, you're not going to try and stop me?"

Katara wondered if she was imagining that he sounded a little disappointed. Well, she certainly wasn't going to give him the satisfaction! "No," she lied through her teeth. "I think it's great."

She had evidently struck a nerve somehow, because Aang's tone was definitely annoyed when he shot back a childish taunt of: "I know it's great."

"I'm glad you know," she snapped back before she could stop herself.

"I'm glad you're glad."

"Good," she muttered.

"Fine."

And just like that, he was gone.

Katara sat there fuming, not even bothering to listen for his whisper-soft retreating footsteps. She was aware that the entire conversation was utterly infantile, but she couldn't have stopped herself if she'd wanted to. Somehow Aang had managed, quite without meaning to, to push all the right buttons to send her rationality right out the window. If she was being childish, she didn't particularly care! He was being a brat, after all, so didn't she have a right to be annoyed with him?

The nerve on him, honestly! She was all too aware that his idiotic plan to ride the unagi was a shameless ploy for attention. What, wasn't he getting enough adoration from his little stalkers? Did he honestly need to monopolize her time, too? The fact that he was off doing something stupid and dangerous that was guaranteed to end in broken bones at the very least was just the cream on top of it all.

"Jerk!" she shouted at the empty room.

After a minute or so of seething, though, images of the skinny airbender alone in the water and dwarfed by a massive slimy beast equipped with a full complement of huge teeth began to invade her mind. She tried to convince herself that she didn't care, and that Aang would be just fine anyway, but she couldn't quite shake a feeling of trepidation.

Her hurt feelings and annoyance slid away from her swiftly, leaving her with a knot in her stomach, both from concern and regret. Even if he was being stupid, she didn't want Aang to get hurt.

"Oh curse it," she muttered.

Leaving aside her waterbending exercises, she jumped to her feet and grabbed her parka as she quit their room and hurried to catch up to him.

* * *

An exhausted Sokka collapsed onto the top step outside the dojo, pulling the traditional Kyoshi headpiece off as he did so. He was out of breath and despite the winter chill in the air he was sweating so heavily that his thick layer of face paint was beginning to run in streaks.

A much more composed Suki, looking thoroughly amused, sat gracefully to his right. She gave him a long look out of the side of her eye. Observing the pensive expression he wore, she clapped him firmly on the shoulder. "Don't beat yourself up that you're not getting it right away," she advised him. "Our technique takes years to learn; you're not going to master it in a single day."

"Yeah?" he asked dubiously. "And how long did it take you to learn?"

She cast her gaze out across the sparse scrubland that lay between the dojo and the village proper. "I started when I was _. It's taken years of discipline and hard training even to get this far, and I know I still have more to learn."

"But you're the leader, aren't you?" he asked. "How can you be the leader if you haven't learned everything yet?"

Suki laughed, a clear summer sound that sent an unexpected shiver down his spine. "The thing about leadership is that once you're actually stuck being a leader, you realize just how much you still need to know." She leaned back, casually stretching her long legs down the steps before her, and turned her head to gaze at him with an appraising look in her violet eyes. "You know," she added in a thoughtful tone, "I really misjudged you, Sokka."

"Yeah?" He raised one black-painted eyebrow playfully.

"Yeah. I kind of assumed you were just another misogynist jerk whose respect I couldn't earn even if I wanted to."

This time _both_ of Sokka's eyebrows climbed toward his hairline in surprise. "Thanks," he said sarcastically.

"But you're not, though," she added. "A little thoughtless, maybe, but you're a decent guy."

"I appreciate the vote of confidence," he grumbled. After a moment of reflection, he leaned back against the stairs as well, mimicking her pose. "If I'm completely honest, I think I may have been letting some other stuff influence how I treated you."

"Like what?"

He shrugged. "I thought about it a lot last night, and I think... well, my dad's been off fighting in the war for years. I haven't seen him since I was a kid, pretty much. And you and the other warriors have these amazing skills. I think there was a part of me that resented that you're here safe on your island and he's out there fighting."

As he spoke, his gaze had been fixed on a point somewhere in the distance, but abruptly he started, and turned to look at her with a faintly incredulous look on his face. "You're too easy to talk to, you know that?" he said, seeming oddly disgruntled by this fact.

She laughed softly. "I think I'll take that as a compliment, even though I'm pretty sure you didn't mean it that way."

"Take it however you want," Sokka said in a faux-aloof tone. "It's not like I care."

She jostled his shoulder playfully. "I think I'm reconsidering my former opinion. You _are_ a jerk."

"It's all part of my charm," he shot back.

Suki retaliated by giving a sharp tug on his wolf's tail, eliciting a yelp of pain from the Water Tribe boy.

Before Sokka could respond in kind, however, Oyaji came dashing up the path to the dojo as fast as his advanced age would allow. "Suki! Come quick!" he cried.

The girl was on her feet in an instant. "What is it?" she called.

"The village is under attack!"


	13. Chapter 12: Kindling

**A/N-** *pokes head into fic* *gets pelted with rotten tomatoes* *cowers, but takes it like a lady*

Sorry. The world decided that my summer "vacation" (LOL people with real jobs don't have those) was irrelevant and that what my life really needed was a nasty bout of flu, compounded with a sudden and unexpected move to a new apartment (still pending) and a whole slew of other superfun things. If "superfun" means "not superfun," that is. I apologize from the bottom of my heart for the delay (it didn't help matters that this chapter is essentially filler, albeit badass filler, and I don't really like writing filler/rehash that much). Just look at it this way- between the hiatus and this relatively light chapter, you guys get a break before I resume my attempts to break your hearts repeatedly.

Now to reply to my "anonymous" reviewers...

**Phooka-** Endless thanks for your high praise! I doubt it's entirely warranted, but I certainly appreciate it... and yes, if I have my say, we will be seeing more of Zuko's crew (if for no other reason than that I have an unlikely soft spot for Lieutenant Jee).

**corporal cactus-** You may have a point. I do heavily favor Katara, especially in the first several chapters. This stems from a couple of different sources, the primary being that the series did so and I take my cue from the source material. Secondary reasons for this bias may include the simple fact that I do write heavily from Katara's POV, and use her internal dialogue as a vehicle for examining the narrative from a somewhat less omniscient perspective. Whether this is a mistake on my part remains to be seen, but I hope my tendency to utilize her perspective won't hinder your further enjoyment of this story!

**GibbytheSecond-** I know technically you left your comment on Katara & the Avatar, but since this is getting updated sooner, and you indicated that you do read this, I thought I'd take a gamble and respond to you here. I'm sorry my slowness is torturing you, dear! I promise I'll do my best not to keep you hanging quite this long again! That being said... if you want to get regular updates on my writing (among other fun fandom stuff), feel free to check out my ATLA/LoK blog on Tumblr. There's a link on my profile, and I do use it to keep people up to date on where I'm at with this story. *shameless self-promotion GO!*

**Guest:** Same as Gibby here, you left a review on a different story, but since it's a oneshot and won't be updated, I'm replying here. Yes, I do plan on continuing Almost Airbenders! I certainly haven't forgotten it, and I know exactly what's going to happen in that story. I just haven't had motivation to write it. (Pssst, if someone else wants to write some beautiful Teo Lee or make fanart for them... you totally should, because it would totally re-inspire me to write for them.) I'm so glad, though, that you like my writing so much!

Thank you all for your continued support and feedback. It really motivates me to keep going, knowing that I'm not the only one having a good time here.

* * *

~*Book 1: Wind & Water*~

Chapter 12: Kindling

"_Your number has been called_  
_ Fights and battles have begun_  
_ Revenge will surely come_  
_ Your hard times are ahead._"  
-Muse

* * *

Somehow or other, it had all gone terribly wrong. Katara held her breath, trying to keep her teeth from chattering even as a chill wind off the water swept across her soaked clothing, raising gooseflesh on her skin. But it wasn't the cold and damp that had her huddling closer to the unconscious airbender in her arms. No, that honor went to the ominous noise of stamping feet and the clank of armor that sounded from just beyond their shamefully spare hiding place.

She shrank down against the boulder she lay upon, smelling the stink of seaweed all around them and almost afraid to breathe for fear that they would be found. And all the while, she couldn't help the stirrings of panic every time her eyes fell on Aang because he still wasn't moving...!

_Five minutes ago..._

_The second he walked out the door, Aang had known he'd made a stupid,_ stupid _mistake. This appeared to be turning into a disturbing trend in his life lately. He had been a complete jerk to Katara for no good reason, and Aang was pretty sure if Gyatso could have seen it, he'd have swatted him. He'd had half a mind to go right back inside and apologize to her, but before he could commit to it, he'd been ambushed by his new friends. With Saio tugging on one arm and Koko on the other, he didn't have much choice but to let them drag him down to ride the unagi as planned._

_And that was how he had ended up spending the last ten minutes neck deep in the bay, contemplating the fact that the water seemed a great deal colder than it had felt only a few days earlier. Even worse, he could see that his audience was starting to lose interest. The longer the unagi failed to appear, the less inclined his new friends were to stick around without any action. Some of the girls had already wandered off, and the attention of the rest was beginning to drift. Even Koko, who had been nothing but enthusiastic about all their plans up until now, was sitting glumly in the sand with her chin propped on her fist._

_"What's taking so long, Aangy?" she called plaintively._

_"Any second now!" he shouted back, but there wasn't any real conviction behind the words._

_He didn't particularly care about the unagi. He hadn't cared that much when the plan was devised. If he was totally honest with himself, the reason he had suggested it was all down to Katara. She'd been distant the last few days, and a part of him had needed to know she still cared enough to worry. It was a very confusing feeling, because he also didn't want to see her looking at him like he might break if she said the wrong thing the way she had those first few days after their visit to the temple, but he couldn't help it. He was baffled by his own internal chaos. He couldn't seem to make up his mind what he actually wanted- all he knew was that somewhere along the line, he had screwed up._

_He sank despondently into the water, watching passively as the girls trailed off one by one, until even Koko gave up on him. "Sorry, Aang," she called out to him. "We're gonna go check out the new tree fort Chen's brother built." And then they were all gone._

_Well, maybe he deserved that. He was such an_ idiot! _Hadn't he screwed up enough for one lifetime?_

_A sudden flash of blue on the shore caught his eye. He raised his head for a better view over the swell of the waves and, to his astonishment, saw Katara standing on the shore.  
_

_"Katara? What are you doing here?" he called to her._

_"I wanted to make sure you were okay," she said. "I was worried."_

_She was?  
_

_"But earlier... it seemed like you didn't care."_

_Katara's expression slipped sadly, and she nodded. "You and your fangirls were annoying me and I said some things I didn't mean. I'm sorry."_

_Was that what her cool attitude the last couple days had been about? She'd been upset that he was spending so much time with other people? It did explain a lot of things._

_Well, Aang had learned a valuable lesson from the experience. Sweet as they were, Koko and the other girls were fair-weather friends as Gyatso would have said. But Katara... Katara was still here long after they'd left. Even disregarding the inherent Water Tribe color-pun, Katara was true blue. And he had questioned that, and tried to test her._

_If he hadn't felt like scum before, he sure did now._

_"I'm sorry, too," he said. "I was a real jerk to you."_

_"Yeah, yeah. Get out of the water before you catch a cold, you big jerk!"_

_The forgiveness was implicit in her tone, but the sparkling warmth in her expression as their eyes met across the water confirmed it. All would be forgotten, and they would go back to being friends without stupid paranoia and jealousy getting in the way. _

_Even from so far away, Katara's smile was still visible. Aang felt warmed by it, and he grinned back at her. She really was amazing, he thought, and he was extremely grateful she had decided to forgive him. As he started pulling for the shore, eager to get out of the freezing water, he was so caught up in appreciating Katara's wonderfully unconditional friendship that he utterly failed to notice the large razored fin cutting silently through the water behind him..._

The unagi had tossed Aang about like a ragdoll right before Katara's horrified eyes. He had clung valiantly to its slipper barbel, narrowly avoiding its vicious snapping jaws in the process, but the force of its thrashing was too violent and he had been flung clear. He had slammed into the water so hard it would be a miracle if he didn't have any broken ribs, and he had been unconscious ever since.

Katara herself had dived into the water and pulled him out before the unagi could make an easy meal of him. Its wild splashing as she deprived it of its chosen dinner had created huge waves which had in turn deposited the two sodden benders in a narrow crevice in the rocky shore. They had been further driven back when the creature blasted an enormous jet of water straight from it's jaws. Despite the discomfort, though, this proved to be a blessing in disguise. No sooner had Katara poked her head over their bare shelter than a squadron of Fire Nation soldiers, mounted on fierce creatures the likes of which she'd never seen before disembarked from a ship docked just out of sight in the bay.

Katara had caught sight of the unmistakable visage of Prince Zuko before she ducked back into concealment, and she felt an abrupt swell of anger. He was undoubtedly here for Aang. It was bad enough that Zuko had already kidnapped him once before; that he was still pursuing them, still intent on his goal to deliver Aang to the Fire Lord, made her want to punch him right in his disfigured face. What business did he have, attacking a kind, innocent boy whose only crime was being born?

Once the soldiers had filed past and continued their march to the village, Katara turned her worried gaze back to the airbender in her arms. To her horror, he was turning blue about the lips. She thought fast and, on a gamble swept her hand across his chest. Sure enough, there was water in his lungs, and in the most technical and precise waterbending she had ever performed, she drew it carefully back through his windpipe. It only took a few seconds to complete, but by the time she had finished she was sweating despite the freezing temperatures.

Aang coughed, sputtered, and opened his eyes. Katara had to resist the urge to suffocate him all over again in a hug, she was so relieved. As it was, she restrained herself simply to a relieved, affectionate smile.

"Katara?"

"Yeah?"

"Don't ride the unagi," he said solemnly.

She laughed. She had discovered, much to her surprise, that she had missed him while he was running around with all those girls; it was good to have him back to something like himself. Her mood quickly sobered, though, when she recalled that they had another pressing problem to deal with. She was reluctant to throw another crisis at him after he'd just been half-drowned, but she didn't have much of a choice.

"Aang, can you move?"

In answer to her question he sat up, though not without wincing a little. "Yeah, why?"

"Because the Fire Nation is attacking the island," she informed him.

"What?" he exclaimed, leaping to his feet with surprising grace for a boy who had been unconscious not even a minute earlier.

She grimaced. "Prince Zuko and a bunch of soldiers just went past a few minutes ago. They're headed for the village now."

"Oh no," Aang said. "This is bad."

Without waiting on her to say anything else, he vaulted up out of their little shelter and down over the large granite boulders to the sandy ground on the other side with the grace and speed only an airbender can achieve. Katara followed him more slowly, chasing after him as he ran for the treeline. By the time she caught up to him, he was pulling on his clothes and had his staff firmly in hand.

"What are you gonna do?" she asked.

He looked over at the warship at anchor in the bay, then back in the direction of the village, where smoke could already be seen rising into the clear afternoon sky. His expression was grim, and it looked strange on a face that she was used to seeing full of laughter and excitement.

"Whatever I can," he said. "I mean... he's here for me, right? I can't let him hurt them. These people helped us."

Katara nodded. "Alright, let's go."

* * *

Suki sprinted down the path from the dojo with long graceful strides that reminded Sokka forcibly of a tundra wolf. He kept stride with her only by virtue of his longer legs. "Who is it?" he asked. "The Fire Nation?"

"Who else would it be?" she said tersely, eyes fixed on the bend in the track that would bring them in sight of the village proper.

As they approached the curve, a small squad of warriors emerged from the trees on silent feet. They were all in uniform, brightly painted faces grim. Suki skidded to a stop to confer with them. "What are we up against?" she asked.

"Twenty men," one girl confirmed. "Eight of them mounted, twelve on foot. They made landing in the rocky cove, and they'll reach the village in three minutes. Most of them appear to be armed, but there are at least four that appear to rely on firebending alone."

Suki nodded, expression unreadable. "We can't bank on the rest of them being non-benders, though," she said.

The other warriors made soft noises of agreement.

"What are they here for?" Ayoki asked.

Suki pursed her lips. "I can only think of one thing that would bring them here now," she said, and her eyes flickered to Sokka meaningfully.

"They're after _us?_" he asked incredulously.

"It's too much of a coincidence," one of the older girls confirmed. "The Fire Nation hasn't come to our shores in thirty years, and then they show up just days after you do?"

Sokka glowered in the direction of the village, as if he could cut down the approaching soldiers with only the power of his baleful gaze. "That just figures," he muttered. "Alright, so what's out strategy?"

"You and your friends need to get out of here. We have to locate your sister and Avatar Aang, but our primary objective is protecting the village." Suki raised her head high, her tone commanding and her striking indigo eyes determined. "Ayoki, I need you to run back to your grandfather's house and gather the Avatar's belongings. His bison needs to be ready to fly at a moment's notice. The rest of you, divide up and spread out through the village. Take to the rooftops. We may have an advantage if we can catch them from above. Attack pattern four, just like we've practiced. Sokka, you're with me!"

And then they were running again, veering off the path and into the forest. They had only gone a few yards when Suki whipped around to glare at him and hissed, "You're making more noise than an elephant-leopard with honey on it's toes! Didn't anybody ever teach you how to move quietly in the undergrowth?"

"I grew up in the South Pole," he shot back in a sardonic whisper. "We don't _have_ undergrowth!"

"Yeah, well, try to keep quiet!"

He growled at her in annoyance, but did his best to copy her movements and the noise of his footsteps decreased noticeably as a result.

When they reached the village just scant minutes later, a skirmish had already broken out between the first squad of warriors and the invading soldiers. In the first moments of the battle, it abruptly appeared to be raining girls as Kyoshi warriors leaped from every accessible rooftop onto the backs of soldiers, wrestling many of them to the ground. The ringing and scrape of struck metal filled the air as fans deflected sword thrusts and quick fists struck out at helmeted heads.

Sokka dove into the chaos, quickly engaging the nearest soldier, a pike-wielding infantryman of intimidating height. Using the techniques he had so recently been taught by Suki, he used a twist of the fans he still bore to redirect his opponent's attempt to run him through. He seized the end of his pike before the soldier could draw his weapon back. Using his shorter stature and greater speed to his advantage, Sokka darted past his opponent, still holding onto the end of the pike. As he ran around behind him, the end of the long shaft became tangled up in it's wielder's legs, tripping him up and sending him crashing to the ground. Before the tall man could recover, Sokka drove his elbow hard into the man's sternum, leaving him gasping for air and rendered entirely ineffective for combat.

He jumped back into a defensive stance, his eyes darting around as he assessed the ongoing battle. It became apparent immediately that despite the Kyoshi warriors' superior strategy and training, the element of surprise had given the Fire Nation troops a significant advantage. Fire blasts were flying everywhere and several buildings around the main square were already ablaze.

Suki, for her part, had engaged the leader of the squadron- none other than Prince Zuko himself. She ran at him, fans spread and face determined. She looked fierce and magnificent and every inch the skilled warrior she was, but just as Sokka caught sight of her, a lash from the tail of Zuko's scaly mount sent her flying. She let out a loud cry as she collided heavily with the front porch of a house. Zuko advanced on her, a callous look on his face.

Something in Sokka bubbled up with white hot panic, and he ran at top speed to intercept Zuko before he could do something worse to her. He hurled himself between the two combatants, his stance defensive and his expression determined, his fans spread in the defensive pattern she had taught him.

"Go back where you came from, Zuko!" he shouted.

The sound of his name gave the scarred prince pause. "How do you-?" He studied Sokka closely, trying to place him beneath the heavy makeup he wore. After a moment's blank confusion, recognition dawned. "I don't believe it! You're that Water Tribe peasant. You mean the Avatar actually let you keep traveling with him?"

Sokka glared at him but before he could bite out the sharp retort on his tongue, another voice, high and clear, rang out over the din of the fight.

"Zuko! Are you looking for me?"

Both prince and warrior turned to look and sure enough, standing beneath the statue of Avatar Kyoshi, stood Aang. He held his staff in hand and face fixed in a fierce scowl.

Sokka's first reaction upon seeing him there was to place himself between Aang and the Fire Prince. His protective instinct was sudden and intense, because Zuko was powerful and mounted and armed and Aang was just a _kid_... but Sokka remembered the incredible display of power he had witnessed high in the Patola Mountains only a few days before and realized that he was much more likely to get his butt kicked by Zuko than Aang was. He tamped down on that immediate, instinctive reaction and left Aang to it, turning his attention to Suki instead.

She was out of breath and obviously hurting, but she was still determinedly getting to her feet nonetheless. Sokka quickly grabbed her arm and helped her up, then pulled her quickly around the back wall of the building.

"Are you okay?" he asked, as they both crouched low, out of the immediate path of the pitched battle raging on the main street.

She nodded, wincing slightly. "Yeah, just got the wind knocked out of me. It's my own stupid fault, I should have expected their mounts to be battle-trained."

"You couldn't have known."

"But I _should_ have been careful," she said. "In battle, mistakes like that can get you killed."

Sokka marveled at her discipline and readiness. He was warrior-trained. No Southern Water Tribe boy wasn't these days, and especially not the chief's son. But Suki had attained a level of clear-headedness and strategic wisdom that he still lacked. He had been trained to fight like a warrior, but she had been trained to _think_ like one.

"We have to get back out there," she said. "My warriors will be counting on me to lead them, and you need to get your friends out of here."

Sokka nodded. "Have you seen Katara?"

"I think she was helping get civilians out of the way of the battle," Suki informed him. "Last I saw of her she was a few houses north of here. Now go, we don't have time to say goodbye!" She got to her feet and was preparing to run back into the fray, but Sokka caught her wrist and stopped her.

"Is there time for me to say I'm sorry?" he asked. "I was a real jerk to you at first, and I want to apologize. I didn't respect you, and that was wrong of me. I treated you like a girl when I should have treated you like a warrior."

Suki gave him a look then that was hard to decipher, somewhere between a smile and a dumbfounded stare. Sokka found himself abruptly captivated by the sparkle in her striking eyes, frozen to the spot before she leaned in and kissed his cheek softly. "I am a warrior," she said, "but don't forget that I'm a girl, too." Her lips ticked upward in a grin for just a moment before she stepped away from him. "Now go! Get the Avatar to safety! And _don't forget to keep your center of gravity low!_"

And just like that, she was gone. Sokka was left with a blush so fierce he was sure it was showing through his face paint, and the disconcerting feeling that Suki had just been telling him something important.

* * *

Zuko's first fire-blast was easily avoided, as was the second. But the young prince was determined, and having met him in a fight once before, Aang knew not to underestimate him. And he was right- the next attack, as Zuko swept an arm in a fierce diagonal motion and unleashed a trail of fire like a whip, forced Aang to dive out of the way. He tucked his body under and rolled, coming back to his feet in a crouched, defensive position well out of the way of the line of fire.

He needed to end this, fast. There were people around, and wooden houses everywhere. This was worse than the Southern Water Tribe, all surrounded by snow and ice and mostly comprised of igloos that were far less susceptible to burning. That had been bad enough, but here, too?

Maybe if he took Zuko out, the other soldiers would be more concerned with helping their leader than attacking the villagers. He hoped so, anyway. But how was he going to do that? Zuko was doing a very good job of making sure Aang couldn't get near him.

Spying a pair of fans that Sokka had dropped before he disappeared off to somewhere, inspiration struck. Some of the monks had used fans like these to strengthen their airbending. He had never tried the technique himself, but he'd seen it done and he was pretty sure he could imitate it.

Snatching the fans up, he spread them to their fullest capacity, taking a moment to test their weight and durability even as he dodged yet another blast of fire from Zuko. Then he turned in a circle once, aligning his chi in preparation, then with a coordinated sweeping motion he used the fans to conduct a powerful blast of air directly into the face of the Fire Nation prince.

Aang couldn't help but be impressed with the result. Zuko's mount staggered backward, groaning in discomfort, and Zuko himself was hurled from it's back and slammed across the street and into the front door of a shop, which collapsed inward from the force of his impact.

The young airbender didn't stick around to admire his handiwork, however. He had to find Katara and Sokka. Dropping the fans, he opened his glider and launched himself into the sky. As he soared over the village and saw flames rising from what seemed like every building, his heart sank and his stomach felt full of lead. The sight of the village children huddled and crying out of the line of fire, girls he had been playing with only an hour ago desperate and sobbing with fear... roofs quickly being reduced to ashes and wounded civilians and warriors alike fleeing for their lives... was this what it had been like when the Fire Nation attacked his people? Had they cried out in fear and tried to run before they all died? Had they cried out for someone, anyone to save them, and...?

But that thought was like a sword straight through his heart, and he couldn't think about it right now or he wasn't going to be able to function. He needed his head clear right now, and so he _forced_ the unwanted images out of his mind.

He spied Katara, who was using her waterbending to try to put out one of the fires using water from a rain barrel.

"Aang, there you are!" she exclaimed.

He landed beside her and snapped his glider shut. "This is all my fault," he said numbly. "I brought this here."

"You couldn't have known Zuko would follow us here," Katara objected. "It's not your fault, it's _his_."

Aang shook his head. "But they wouldn't have come if it weren't for me. They're going to burn this place to the ground!"

Katara nodded. "Okay, then we need to leave."

Leave? He didn't want to leave. He didn't want to abandon these people to their fate, the way he'd abandoned- That was another thought he didn't want to have. The point was, how could he just run when people were fighting for their lives, for their homes?

She must have seen the conflict in his face, because she put a reassuring hand on his shoulder and said, "I know it feels wrong to run, but that might be the only way we can give them a chance. Zuko will follow us, and we can draw him off."

Aang nodded sadly. As much as he hated it, she was right. "I'll call Appa," he said, shoulders slumping in defeat.

"One step ahead of you, buddy," Sokka said suddenly.

Aang and Katara whipped around to peer between two buildings. Sokka was waiting in the back street beside Appa, and Ayoki was holding the reins. "I've gathered your supplies together," she told them. "Suki thought you three might need to make a hasty departure under the circumstances, and had me prepare your bison, Avatar Aang."

"Thank you, Ayoki," Aang said, bowing to her.

He was touched deeply by what these people had done for him. They had taken him in, given him shelter and the warmest welcome he had ever received in all his years of traveling the world, and even now, with their lives and homes in danger, they were still thinking of him first and foremost. It only made him feel all the worse about abandoning them like this. There had to be a way to help them...

* * *

The warmth of Suki's lips was still glowing on Sokka's cheek as they took flight. But all the kisses from all the pretty girls in the world couldn't have counteracted the cold, nauseous feeling in his gut when he looked down and saw the village in flames. Zuko's soldiers had done their job well- too well- and it seemed as if every building in the little town was afire. Even the statue of Kyoshi was smoldering. The sight conjured to mind an image of the Southern Water Tribe so many years ago, and the smell of burned flesh rose up sharp in his nose...

Sokka shook the memories away; he needed to be here in the present. He looked across the saddle at the other two. Katara was watching Aang intently. And Aang, for his part, was looking back at the burning village. He looked every bit as pensive and upset as Sokka felt; his body language was dejected and his sadness and reluctance to leave Kyoshi Island to its fate was written all over his face.

Then, suddenly, Aang's eyes darted down to the water beneath them, and a hard determined expression crossed his face. Before Sokka or Katara had a chance to question it, he had hurled himself from his post on Appa's head and was falling toward the water. Katara cried out in alarm, but Aang had already aligned his body and entered the water so smoothly he barely made a splash.

Sokka heard Katara yelling something, but his eyes were riveted on the suddenly churning water beneath them.

Moments later Aang rose up from the water, riding high on the back of the unagi and holding tight to it's enormous barbels. To Sokka's complete astonishment, he wrestled with the giant creature and turned it in the direction of the village. He gave a mighty tug on the creature's nose and prompted it to open it's mouth. Still squirming and thrashing against Aang's direction, the unagi let out a mighty screech and blasted a jet of water from it's open jaws.

The spray fell on the village and soaked it through, and before their eyes many of the worst of the fires were controlled or put out entirely. The unagi screeched and thrashed again and this time the force of it's writhing was too great, and Aang was thrown free, but Appa had swooped down and caught him in his enormous paws. Sokka stared back at the now gently smoldering village, then down to where Aang was pulling himself up Appa's leg by clinging to his thick fur.

At last he thought he was beginning to understand why Aang was the Avatar, why it was that the great spirit Katara claimed lived within their strange little friend had chosen him in the first place. Aang was a goofball and quite possibly the most bizarre person Sokka had ever met, but there was something noble about him, too. There was a good heart hidden behind that dopey grin of his, and Sokka was beginning to suspect that Aang might just be brave to the point of stupidity as well.

Aang himself confirmed this a moment later when he hauled himself back over the edge of the saddle. "I know, I know," he said with a roll of his eyes, clearly expecting a lecture from Katara, "that was stupid and dangerous."

Katara, for her part, was beaming. "Yes, it was," she confirmed, before engulfing Aang in an enormous hug.

Sokka wasn't really the touchy-feely kind of guy, but he privately thought that he was kind of tempted to hug Aang, too.

* * *

The light cloud cover that had hung over the sea toward sunset had rolled away by midnight, leaving the sky clear. A gibbous moon lay low in the sky and cast a golden shimmer over the waves, and the air was cold and clear.

When Iroh came above board for an evening constitutional, he was unsurprised to see another figure on deck. He was startled, however, when he realized that the other man was Lieutenant Jee and not his nephew, as he had initially assumed. The young officer was leaning on the railing, his amber eyes trained on the rolling waves and his bushy eyebrows drawn together thoughtfully. He was clearly pondering something of significance.

"A very nice night for a stroll on deck," Iroh remarked.

Jee nodded, tossing him a courteous smile.

"But something tells me, Lieutenant," he added knowingly, "that you are not out here all alone during game night because you wanted to enjoy the nice weather."

This earned him a look of genuine surprise, tempered with respect. "You're very insightful, General," Jee said.

Iroh considered urging Jee to address him more informally (how many years had they been on this ship together, after all?), but let it slide. He had learned through long experience that it was hard to train a soldier out of a habit. "May I ask what's on your mind?" he said, instead.

Jee looked back out to sea, his look still thoughtful. "Just thinking about what we're doing out here. Chasing the Avatar, I mean."

"And this troubles you?"

Jee considered the question for a moment before replying. When he spoke, his tone was ponderous and he chose his words carefully. "Maybe. I'm as patriotic as the next man, and I understand that stopping the Avatar is important to the Fire Lord's destiny to share our nation's glory with the world, but..." He sighed heavily. "I don't know. I wonder, sometimes."

Iroh nodded with a long, slow blink. It was clear that Jee was struggling to make the connection between his own disjointed thoughts. "What do you wonder?" he asked, guiding him gently.

"It's probably not important," he said. "Actually, it's probably not even worth overthinking. I've seen the Avatar in action and I know what he's capable of, so I understand why capturing him is important. Don't think that's what I'm saying. I just have to wonder... I mean, you saw him, General. How old do you think he is? Thirteen? Fourteen at the most? He's just a kid."

"War makes soldiers of children and corpses of men," Iroh replied.

Jee let out a bark of bitter laughter. "Don't I know it, General."

The empathetic quiet that only exists between two soldiers fell between them, and they stood together watching the silent sea slip past beneath the setting moon.

* * *

It was already late afternoon when they left Kyoshi Island, and the sun had nearly set by the time they reached the shore of the Earth Kingdom an hour or so later. They set up camp quickly, and Sokka got a little fire going to warm them against the chilly evening air and the wind blowing in off the sea. The three of them sat around the fire, all of them staring at the dancing flames and all lost in thought about the events that had driven them from their temporary safety on the island.

Katara was the first to break the silence.

"Aang, how did you know to use the unagi like that? To put out the fires?"

He grinned. "I paid attention in my lessons. Since my people are nomads, we have to know about the dangerous animals we might encounter when we're traveling to different parts of the world. Giant eels like the unagi tend to have a third stomach filled with water that they use to help them adapt to different pressures. I figured it couldn't hurt to try." As he spoke, he tried to shrug to brush the event off as no big deal, but as he did so, he winced.

Katara didn't miss the expression. "Hey, Aang, are you okay?" she asked. "You kind of got roughed up a lot today."

"I'm just a little sore," he said, waving a hand.

"Take off your shirt," Katara commanded.

Aang's eyes widened and he sputtered, "W-what?"

"I just want to make sure you haven't got any serious injuries," she said. "Sometimes you don't notice something until later."

Still a little startled by her request, Aang reluctantly removed his shirt. Katara studied his torso closely, failing to notice her patient turning scarlet under her inspection.

"Okay, turn around," she said.

Aang did as he was told, and Katara let out a gasp. "Oh, Aang, your back's black and blue!"

"It's nothing," he said dismissively. But both Sokka and Katara could see that he wasn't being sincere. His entire back seemed to be one massive purple bruise, and an ugly-looking one at that.

"It must be from where the unagi flung you into the water before Zuko showed up," Katara guessed.

Aang shrugged, wincing again as the motion stretched the damaged skin and sore muscles in his back. "It's fine," he said. "Really. I'm sure I had worse playing airball as a kid."

Katara ignored his protests completely. She had immediately started rooting around in one of her bags, and after a minute or two, produced a small earthen jar with a flourish. "Ah-ha! I knew I had it somewhere. Ayoki gave this to me," she explained. "It's a numbing salve the warriors make from local plants, and it should help keep the pain down for awhile. She thought it might come in handy."

"Katara, it's okay," Aang said. "It's really not that bad."

She fixed him with a pointed stare, her hands on her hips, and said, "Aang, that's clearly awful and I bet it hurts a lot. You probably won't sleep well tonight unless we numb it a little, so let me deal with this, okay?"

Aang nodded meekly and turned his back to her. "She's really stubborn, isn't she?" he asked Sokka.

"You have _no_ idea," he replied.

"I'm going to pretend I can't hear you," Katara replied in a haughty tone.

Aang was about to say something in response, but at that precise moment she began applying the salve and he promptly forgot what he'd been planning to say. The sour-smelling paste was cool, but her hands were warm and extremely gentle. The numbing effect of the medicine went into effect almost immediately, leaving a sensation of blessed relief from the stinging in his skin in the wake of her touch. He wanted to tell her it felt nice, but he couldn't seem to find the words to do so.

"There," she said. "That should do it. At the least, you'll be able to get a decent night's sleep without constantly having to turn over."

He pulled his shirt back on, wondering why he still felt so exposed, and smiled at her. "Thank you, Katara," he said earnestly, and he didn't just mean for applying the salve.

* * *

**A/N-** Your continued support of this story is greatly appreciated. I apologize again for the long wait. The next chapter should be up much, much sooner than this one was.


	14. Chapter 13: Call to Arms

**A/N-** This chapter is much shorter than the last, and it's something I've been looking forward to writing for a long time. It's just another interlude chapter, but I think it's important. Enjoy!

* * *

~*Book 1: Wind & Water*~

Chapter 13: Call to Arms

"_And the air is thin_  
_ And it blows through your skin_  
_ And you feel like something_  
_Is about to begin..._"  
-The Airborne Toxic Event

* * *

The cleanup effort took a long time. The Avatar's efforts on their behalf had prevented the fires set by the invading Fire Nation prince from spreading any further, but the damage was still extensive. Many homes had been burned, some of them irreparably, and most of the shops around the village square had to be closed down for repairs.

The Kyoshi warriors did what they could to help repair damaged buildings and aid the relief effort in any way possible. Several of them, those especially skilled in the healing arts every warrior was trained for, had volunteered in the emergency infirmary that had been set up in one of the least-affected buildings. The rest mostly dedicated their time to the actual rebuilding process, and every night Suki went home sweaty, tired, and usually covered in ashes. It was not easy work, but she was not intimidated by hard labor, and neither were any of her fellow warriors.

But as the weeks rolled by and the village began to recover, an idea that had been turning in Suki's mind since the day of the Fire Nation invasion began to take full shape.

War had not come to Kyoshi Island in her time, nor in her parents' time, nor in her grandparents' time. Between the isolated (and strategically null) location of their island and the isolationist and politically neutral policies the citizens employed, they had successfully avoided direct conflict with the Fire Nation. Most people in both the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation would have forgotten that the island even existed were it not for the famous Avatar that was it's namesake.

No, until recently the war had not touched Kyoshi.

To Suki, the war had not seemed real. She trained in readiness for anything that might threaten their shores. She heard stories of terrible battles fought in the Earth Kingdom. But it had always been an abstract, a concept unimaginable when laid beside her people's peaceful life. It was a thing she couldn't imagine until it was suddenly thrust upon her.

She was a warrior, but until a few weeks earlier, she had been untested in combat.

Suki was proud of how she and her fellow fighters had carried themselves. It had been a rough fight, but they had been courageous, successful, and precise, and through reconstructing the battle on paper, she had been able to spot the weak points in their strategies and attack formations. On the whole, despite the cost, it had made the Kyoshi warriors stronger.

It stung to realize, though, that she hadn't understood. Not really.

Realistically, she knew they had been lucky. Although the infrastructure of their home had been badly damaged, it was repairable. No one had died, and only a small number of the injured would suffer long-term damage from their wounds. What had passed on Kyoshi had been mild compared to what the stories said was done on the continent. The Avatar had lured the firebenders away before they could do any serious harm.

The Avatar. A fourteen year old kid up against the most powerful military force the world had ever seen, and from what little she had seen of Aang while he had been with them, she was sure he wouldn't back down. There had to be a reason that Katara believed in him so fiercely, and as far as Suki was concerned, he had more than proved himself in his protection of her home. It was inspiring.

But what had really inspired the idea that was currently growing into a conviction was Sokka's words.

_My dad's been off fighting in the war for years... I think there was a part of me that resented that you're here safe on your island and he's out there fighting._

His words struck a chord with her, and day by day she became more and more convinced that she could not be content to stay on Kyoshi Island much longer. People were fighting and dying all across the world, and she was highly trained with skills that might be used to join in that fight. She could protect people, she could _help_ them.

And that was why every last one of the Kyoshi Warriors was gathered in the training dojo, waiting for her to enter and explain why she had called them there.

Suki knew, beyond any doubt, that she was leaving the island one way or another. It was time to find out if any of her sisters would be joining her. She took a deep breath, and stepped through the door...

* * *

**A/N-** Short and sweet, but hopefully illuminating.


	15. Chapter 14: Nostalgia Tour

**A/N-** Omashu has been causing me a mental breakdown for like a month. Because how the HELL do you translate that to the type of story that this is? It has an established baseline of WTF. And I couldn't figure out how to do that Fireflight style without losing the charm of what makes Bumi... well, _Bumi_. An answer did finally come to me, however. Here's to hoping I do it justice. (I probably won't.)

**GibbytheSecond-** Of course! The whole _point_ of this story is that I have the opportunity to write scenes that the creators were unable to or simply did not have time to include. And yes, as I've already discussed in previous author's notes and on Tumblr, I do intend to include the Lost Adventures (though not necessarily everything... but Relics is definitely getting some significant attention in this fic because that shit was DARK). And yes, I do want to spend some time exploring the siblings' realizations (both separately and jointly) of just how important they are to Aang, what they mean to him and why it's important... and, just as importantly, what _he_ means to _them_.

As much as I love the full Gaang as it stands by the end of the series (including Mai and Ty Lee, whom I will forever consider honorary members of the group for several reasons), with Zuko and Suki and Toph and just everybody... at the end of the day, it always comes back to those three. Aang, Katara, and Sokka are a family in a way that supercedes even the already extraordinary bonds between the other members of the Gaang.

* * *

~*Book 1: Wind & Water*~

Chapter 14: Nostalgia Tour

"_And there's a glance in time suspended as I wonder how it is  
We've been swept up just by circumstance to where the coyote lives  
Where my days are strips of highway..._"  
-Vienna Teng

* * *

They kept a low profile for several days, avoiding the small fishing towns that littered the Earth Kingdom's southwest coastline as much as they could. When the depletion of certain supplies absolutely mandated that they visit the nearest market, they took precautions. They waited until late in the afternoon and left Appa in the hills far out of sight, and Katara made a point to purchase Aang a little knit cap first thing in a moderately successful attempt to make his arrow less obvious. He wasn't keen on wearing it, but consented.

None of them wanted to leave any clues for Prince Zuko.

Other than these precautions though, the Water Tribe siblings' first visit to the Earth Kingdom mainland was off to a smooth start. Aang took a great deal of delight in introducing them to all the wonders of its forested shores. It was worlds apart from their icebound home, even with the early winter snowfall already beginning to reach this far north, resulting in their awakening more than once to a light dusting of snow (or barring that, hoarfrost). Both siblings reveled in the adventure, the novelty of each new sight Aang pointed out to them.

Katara, in particular, was thriving. Sokka had noticed. He doubted it would be apparent to Aang, who had only known her a few short weeks, but it was clear to him. She smiled more now than he could recall seeing her smile since they were just little kids, since _Before_.

When Sokka was pouring over a map one evening, attempting to work out their fastest route to the North Pole, she came to sit beside him. What was meant to be a nod and a glance to acknowledge her proximity turned into a long look at her face. She was grinning widely for no real reason, and Sokka felt an easing, as if he'd been relieved of a burden he hadn't known he was carrying.

Taking note of his lingering stare, she asked "Do I have something on my face?"

He didn't respond directly, but said, "You seem happy."

She tittered softly, surprised. "I am happy," she confirmed. "There's a lot to be happy about."

"Yeah, like what?" he muttered under his breath, thinking of the three mornings in a row he had awakened with a face full of snow, one of which had been been courtesy of an impromptu snowball fight between his traveling companions.

Katara gave his shoulder a playful shove. "Don't be such a sourpuss," she said. "I know full well you enjoy traveling like this, even if you won't admit it!"

Unfortunately, she was right. "Fair enough. But I mean it. You seem really happy lately." He couldn't quite bring himself to say that he was relieved. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed the sound of his sister's laughter until he'd heard it again so much recently.

Her teasing smile softened, and she nodded. "It just feels like everything is going right for once, you know? The Avatar's back, and when we get to the North Pole I'm going to learn waterbending- _real_ waterbending. It's exciting." With a glance toward Aang, who was occupied with trying to untangle a series of knots Appa had managed to work into his fur, she added a little more quietly, "And it's nice to have a friend."

Sokka didn't know how to respond. That one statement said more about Katara's relationship with the other young people of their tribe than Sokka could have explained if he'd had an hour. He hadn't realized it had still been that bad even now; he'd been under the impression that the general mistrust of their tribe's only waterbender had died out years ago. Maybe that showed just how much the two of them had drifted apart until discovering Aang had pulled them back together.

"What's with the map, anyway?" she asked, after the silence had stretched out for some time.

"I'm trying to work out which route we should take," he explained. "Oyaji looked over the map and made a few alterations to show where some towns have been taken under Fire Nation control."

"So what are you thinking?" she asked.

He pointed to a small town on the map. "We're just outside of Tianshui right now. I figure if we keep making the same kind of progress we have been, we'll make it to the other side of the Gulf of Qing Xi by tomorrow. And obviously we want to keep a low profile, so I'm thinking once we get to that side of the Gulf, we should head a little bit to the east. That way we stay away from the Fire Nation outposts near the coast and avoid having to go through Omashu. From everything I've ever heard, it's a pretty big city, and my guess is-"

"Did you say Omashu?" Aang interrupted suddenly. Both siblings jumped, not having heard his light footsteps as he approached them.

"Uh, yeah," Sokka said.

An excited grin spread itself across Aang's face. "Oh man, Sokka, we _have_ to stop in Omashu! I used to go there all the time. You guys would love it!"

Sokka's lips twisted doubtfully. "I don't know," he said. "I'm not sure we should be going anywhere so high profile. It would be too easy for the Fire Nation to find out where you are."

"Oh, come on. The city is incredible, and I haven't been there in..." He paused, apparently counting in his head. Sokka had noticed him doing this a lot, when he nearly forgot to add a century to whatever spam of time he was originally accounting.

"One hundred and two years!" he finally finished.

Sokka, recalling the stories he had avidly listened to as a child when Earth Kingdom traders still frequented their southern waters, asked, "Isn't that the city with the mad king? The one who makes criminals and trespassers dance on a bed of coals to entertain him for their punishment?"

Aang made a face. "How would I know?" he asked. "I don't know who the king is now. But the king a hundred years ago was really nice! He was the uncle of one of my best friends."

"You used to hang out with a prince?" Sokka asked, momentarily distracted. Then he shook his head, bringing himself back to the point. "Never mind, don't answer that. I'm just not sure we should be going to a place led by a guy with a reputation like that."

"Come on, Sokka, what's the worst that could happen?" Aang asked cheerfully.

Katara said slowly, "We never _have_ seen a big city like that." She left the statement lingering, her expression thoughtful and intrigued.

"Not you, too," Sokka groaned.

"Who knows when we'll ever get the chance to see something like this again?" she pointed out. "There aren't that many huge cities like Omashu. We ought to take the chance while we've got it!" Aang for his part nodded eagerly at her logic, with such a hopeful look on his face that it was impossible to disappoint him.

Sokka rolled up his map with a heavy sigh. "Fine. I can't argue with both of you. We'll go to Omashu. But," he added, raising a warning finger to both of them, "we're _not_ staying there overnight!"

* * *

The city of Omashu was one of the oldest in the world. It sat like a crown upon a high mountain top in the Huangshan Mountains of the southwestern Earth Kingdom. The city was so old that the name of the peak it was build on had long been forgotten, if it ever had one, swept beneath the grandeur of the ancient metropolis. Omashu was built in steep tiers, with the king's palace at the very top and cascading layers of homes, businesses, and Western Earth Kingdom cultural strongholds rippling down the mountainsides. Aang remembered it to be a very friendly, open city. Air Nomads were always welcome (which had not been true everywhere in the Earth Kingdom) and the city's government had a longstanding history of fair-mindedness.

Getting behind the walls hadn't been difficult. Although the city was surrounded by a deep gulf on every side and accessible only by one of three stone causeways, Aang was more than capable of talking his way through a city gate. And once they were inside...

Katara had made him wear the stupid itchy hat, but as they stood overlooking the grand city of Omashu, he didn't care. He never thought he, an Air Nomad, would appreciate the stubborn unchangeable nature of the Earth Kingdom so much! Being in this city, this solid, immovable, _wonderful_ city that he could swear hadn't changed one bit in the century he'd been away... it was like coming home.

Maybe not quite like coming home.

But it was good enough for him, for now.

"Wow," Sokka hissed out in a low undertone just behind him.

"We _definitely_ don't have cities like this back home," Katara said.

Aang turned to face them, and was struck by their expressions. Sokka's jaw was hanging wide open, and Katara was staring upwards to the pinnacle of the city. Her eyes were wide and shimmering with wonder, and her lips were curved upwards in a small, delighted smile. _She really was very pretty_, he thought to himself.

"It's great, isn't it?" he prompted eagerly. "Aren't you guys glad we came here?"

Katara nodded enthusiastically and even Sokka offered, "It's really something, alright."

"Come on," he said, waving for them to follow them. "Omashu is famous for its fried bamboo strips, you guys have to try some. And then I can show you how my old pal Bumi and I used to have fun when I would visit."

He took off at a quick walk, heading for a more densely populated part of the city, checking over his shoulder to make sure his friends were keeping up with his pace. To say Aang was excited to share this part of his past with his friends would be a massive understatement. Many of the most memorable days of his childhood had been spent here, and even though his world had changed dramatically since the last time he had visited, getting a chance to relive the experiences with Sokka and Katara was an exciting prospect.

He could introduce them to the unique foods the street vendors in the city were renowned for (which he was particular eager to do because, although he was sure Katara was a very good cook in her own way, he wasn't particularly enthusiastic about any of the limited vegetarian options Water Tribe cuisine offered). He could show them the Fountain of Bai, one of the marvels of Omashu. It was an elaborate fountain of pure diamond, almost as old as the ancient city itself, and according to legend had been crafted by one of the earliest rulers of the city as a demonstration of love to an unknown woman.

Best of all, though, Aang was looking forward to introducing his friends to a certain unofficial use for the city's mail chutes.

"So, Aang," Katara said, falling into step beside him, "Tell us about that friend you mentioned. The prince?"

"He wasn't a prince, exactly."

"But you said his uncle was the king. Wouldn't that make him a prince?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Not in Omashu. Technically, as long as his uncle was ruling, he was part of the royal family, but the government in Omashu doesn't work like most places. The throne isn't passed by blood. According to legend, earthbending was invented here, so earthbending is used to choose the ruler. When the current king dies or chooses to abdicate, a tournament is held to determine his successor. The bender who shows the greatest display of both strength and creativity becomes the new king."

"Wow," Sokka remarked from behind them. "That's really different."

Aang smiled. He had always liked how they ran things in Omashu. It wasn't like other Earth Kingdom cities. "It is. I know the whole history of how that tradition got started, though. Bumi told me about it once, but I don't remember the details. I think it had something to do with not wanting to give any one group too much power for too long."

"That seems wise," Katara said thoughtfully. From the slight pensive furrow of her brow, Aang guessed that she was probably thinking of the Fire Nation, and what the unchecked, absolute power of their current ruling dynasty had done to the world. Or maybe he was just projecting.

"It is. And it makes sense that if any city would be ruled that way, it would be Omashu. The city was built centuries before Emperor Chin united the six provinces into one unified kingdom. The monks told me there were a lot of wars between the old city-states, and even between factions within cities themselves."

"Having a more flexible system of government _does_ seem like a good way to avoid that," Sokka said.

"Exactly."

"You seem to know a lot about Earth Kingdom history," Katara observed.

Aang shrugged. "Not really. I mean, the monks taught us a lot about the other three nations. Their history, their culture, important points of etiquette, that kind of thing. It's part of being a nomad. You have to know that stuff when you're traveling around if you don't want to offend somebody by mistake. But the Earth Kingdom is so huge and their history is so long and complicated, more than any other nation. And that's before you even start talking about how diverse their culture is!" he exclaimed with a laugh. More soberly, he added, "Besides, even though I've achieved mastery in my airbending, I'm still only a temple novice. I'd only just started learning, really."

But that wasn't a train of thought he wanted to follow to the natural conclusion. "But that's beside the point!" he said with deliberate cheerfulness. "You asked about Bumi. Well, he's kind of a genius. Absolutely crazy, but still a genius. He always had these wild ideas, and he's great at seeing past the surface of thing and coming up with creative ways to deal with problems."

"He sounds like he was a really interesting guy," Katara said.

"Yeah," Aang agreed. "When we were twelve, he came up with this really awesome alternative use for Omashu's mail delivery system..."

* * *

Okay, so maybe actually riding the mail chutes hadn't been the best idea, Aang conceded several hours later. He'd thought his airbending would be enough to stabilize the little cart, but he hadn't realized until now just how much of the work Bumi had been doing with his earthbending when they would do that together. This time around, Sokka and Katara had been right to be a little hesitant about joining in his latest scheme. But hey, he'd kept anybody from being seriously hurt, right?

Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the enormous cart full of cabbages a merchant had been hauling past right below the place where they went rocketing off the end of the chute. The cart itself had been more than a little banged up in the ensuing crash and as for the cabbages... well, it was probably better not to mention that.

Aang had felt really bad for the poor cabbage merchant and apologized profusely... right up until the moment that the grey-haired man had called up a pair of royal soldiers and demanded that the three of them be arrested. That was what had led to the four of them- the three of them plus the cabbage merchant- sitting in an antechamber to the throne room in the palace of Omashu.

"The King will hear your case now," a guard announced.

"That's right!" the merchant crowed. "The Mad King of Omashu will sort you hooligans out!"

Katara and Sokka cast twin glares at him as they got to their feet. Aang could practically feel them thinking '_if only you hadn't talked us into it, none of this would have happened!_' He scratched uncomfortably at the woolen hat he was still wearing, pushing it back a bit, and chuckled nervously under their blue-eyed gazes.

"Great, Aang," Sokka drawled. "We're getting our fates decided by a guy known as the Mad King. That's just excellent."

They were led into the emerald-draped throne room where the king was waiting for them and not one of the three companions could keep their jaws from dropping at the sight of the sight that greeted them.

The infamous Mad King was sitting on an enormous throne, carved from what appeared to Aang's (admittedly untrained) eye to be a solid piece of bright green jade, inlaid with a large insignia carved of white marble that hovered like a full moon above the king's head. The throne itself was impressive enough, but as for the man sitting in it... The King was ancient and wrinkled, with liver spots liberally gracing his skin. His hair was wispy and thin, but the pointed white beard he sported was thick and immaculately trimmed. He wore an elaborately draped robe that might have been fashionable were it not an atrocious shade of puce and trimmed with lavender, of all things. One of his eyelids drooped heavily, but the king surveyed them with a clear-eyed gaze and despite his eccentric appearance, Aang wondered just how "mad" the royal personage really was.

"Your majesty," the aggrieved merchant said, "these three young people have caused havoc in your streets! They've gone about inciting chaos and abusing the infrastructure of this good city, and worse... they destroyed my _cabbages!_"

The king raised one busy eyebrow. Given that he raised the brow above his normal eye, this rendered him even more lopsided than he had appeared before as he surveyed the group before him. "Is that so?" he asked in a voice that, though chalky with age, remained every bit as sharp as his eyes.

"Yes, your most esteemed majesty!" the cabbage merchant moaned in the most woebegone voice imaginable.

The king nodded slowly. "I see... I see..."

"You must punish them, your highness! They must be hung! Drawn and quartered! Fed to camel-gators!"

One raised hand, curled with rheumatism but steady as granite, was enough to silence the irate merchant. The king's eyes roamed over the threesome, studying each face in turn. As each member of the company was scrutinized, they could not escape the feeling that this king, mad or not, knew entirely too much about them at a glance. His expression revealed nothing but curious scrutiny as he examined the two Water Tribe siblings. When his eyes came to Aang last of all, however, the tiniest start of surprise crossed his features. Aang had a sense of deja vu, feeling that he had seen that precise expression somewhere before. But the look was gone quickly, replaced for an instant by an expression that might have been joy, before the king's face settled into passive inscrutability once more.

"Yes, yes indeed," he muttered, apparently to himself.

"Your majesty?" the merchant prompted hopefully. "How will you punish these hooligans?"

All three young travelers tensed nervously, awaiting their sentence with no small amount of dread.

"I shall... throw them a feast!" the king pronounced in a rather dramatic tone.

The merchant let out a noise of baffled outrage, but the king was not done. "I shall furthermore purchase your damaged goods from you, oh worthy zucchini-seller, and use them in the preparation of the feast!"

Mollified, the merchant nonetheless had to whisper, "They're _cabbages_, your highness..."

"Cabbage, zucchini, all of that green stuff is the same to me," the king dismissed with a wave of his hand. "Now go. Bring your wares to my kitchens!"

Once the merchant was gone, the king smiled pleasantly at the rear door he had just exited through. "Well, that gets rid of him," he remarked loudly to himself. Then, shifting moods quite abruptly from jovial to ominous, his gaze snapped frontwards once more and zeroed in on the three young people. "Now, as for you three... what am I to do with you, hm?"

"I, uh, thought you were going to throw us a feast. Sir. Your majesty," Aang offered tentatively.

Sokka stepped on his foot.

"So I did, young airbender," the king remarked.

Katara started. "How did you know Aang's an airbender, your highness?" she asked.

The king made a lazy gesture in Aang's direction with one gnarled hand. "It's not every day you see tattoos like that in this day and age," he pointed out.

Aang clapped a hand to his head and realized that the hat Katara had insisted he wear to conceal his identity had slipped back, revealing his arrow. "Oh," he said with a nervous chuckle.

His companions gave him yet another annoyed glare.

"What?" he protested. "It's not my fault this stupid hat won't stay on!"

"And you're not just any airbender, are you?" the king continued, as if he had not been interrupted. He gave them a long, appraising look as the silence stretched out in the throne room.

Finally, Katara caved. "No," she said. "Aang is the Avatar, your majesty."

"Yes, he is," he said, "and that presents me with an interesting dilemma. The Avatar is meant to be the champion of peace and harmony between the nations... but where has the Avatar been all these years when we needed him?"

Aang shrank back imperceptibly. If he hadn't already been feeling that way, by now he certainly wished to be absolutely anywhere but here.

"I must test this young Avatar," the king announced, "to see if he's worthy to fight the Fire Lord for us!"

"What?" Katara exclaimed. "That's not fair! Aang is completely-!"

"Katara, _shut up!_" Sokka hissed.

"Tomorrow, the Avatar shall face a deadly challenge- the Labyrinth of Omashu!"

* * *

"Well, I think that went rather well," Sokka said in a voice heavily laden with sarcasm as he flopped down on his bed.

Katara rolled her eyes. "Says the guy who didn't even try to help."

"Better than making a scene like you," he snapped back. "It's not like you accomplished anything except maybe making him even more annoyed with us."

Aang plopped down on the second of the three beds in the chamber, not really listening to the ongoing bickering between the siblings. He also couldn't bring himself to think much about the fact that they'd been given awfully nice accommodations for prisoners, regardless of what the king had been rambling on about good chambers and bad chambers and refurbished chambers. He and Bumi had gotten into their fair share of trouble in this city, but they'd never been _arrested_ for any of it!

It just went to show, he thought glumly, that times really had changed even here in this unchanging city.

He became aware suddenly that the other two were looking at him expectantly.

"Are you okay, Aang?" Katara asked, and he got the impression that he had already been asked something that he'd missed.

He shrugged. "I'm fine. I'm sorry I got you guys into this mess."

"It's not your fault," Katara assured him.

"Actually, it kinda is," Sokka pointed out, earning him a venomous glare from his sister.

Katara came to sit next to Aang on his bed. "It's okay, Aang," she said. "We knew what we were getting ourselves into when we left home to come with you. Sure, we didn't know that this specific problem would be something we'd run into, but we can deal with it together, okay?"

He smiled at her. She was way too good at cheering him up. "Thanks, Katara," he said earnestly. "I'm sure it will all be alright. The king seems fair, even if he is a little..."

"Eccentric?" she offered.

"Yeah."

Sokka flopped back on his bed with a low groan. "I thought I said we weren't gonna stay the night," he muttered.

Katara shot him that dangerous look again and said, "Oh come on, Sokka. I know it's a little delay, but it will be fine. Aang will take care of the king's challenge tomorrow and then we'll be on our way. One day isn't going to make too much difference in getting to the North Pole."

"And besides, it's just a labyrinth, right?" Aang added. "Basically just a big maze. No problem."

Privately, though, he thought that he would have enjoyed the prospect of meeting the king's challenge a whole lot more if it hadn't involved spending what he suspected might prove to be a large amount of time underground.

* * *

**A/N-** Next chapter: Aang caught between a rock and a hard place (so literally it's not funny), and some other stuff that isn't really important but which I really like.

Also, anyone who isn't following me on Tumblr and therefore hasn't seen me bitching for the last three hours about it should probably know that writing Bumi is ridiculously hard. Without his VA to give his dialogue the inflections that I hear for him in my head, I don't think it comes across right AT ALL.

One final note- my story Diplomacy is finding a new home. I have come to the conclusion that although I really like the idea and did not want to see it abandoned, I am not the right person to write it. I have therefore found an author who is willing to take it off my hands and run with it. Details will be forthcoming.


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